


Put on Your Red Shoes

by radiobread



Category: Grand Theft Auto V
Genre: Angst, Drag, Homophobic Language, M/M, Supportive Michael, Trevor really needs to be told that it's gonna' be okay, pre-game, pre-ludendorff, rated for later chapters, young and weirdly inconfident trevor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 05:50:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5363741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiobread/pseuds/radiobread
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So the town's local strip club does drag shows. Cool. But why does Michael feel like Trevor has something to hide about it? And why does he feel like it's something completely different than what he thinks it is?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Trevor begins to bleed. And at that exact same moment, they begin to feel alive.

The first drop of blood hits the snow. Michael knows with all of his heart that right now, it's time to fucking run.

The second drop of blood hits the snow. Trevor watches it, hot and oily, piercing the crisp white earth beneath them like a burning coal.  And he's smiling. He's looking up, and he's wiping it from his frosted nostrils with the shit eating grin of all shit eating grins, plastered like a warning sign across his face. Warning. Proceed with Caution.

"You ready, pardner?" Trevor speaks, not yet moving for some dangerous reason. His voice is thick with some pseudo-theatrical cowboy crap, and Michael has learned through careful practice that getting annoyed at it just isn't worth it anymore. Two and a half years of that. Two and a half years of his Jesse James bullshit, and his inconvenient dialogue right when they're about three seconds away from becoming big red stains in the snow. Two and a half big ones. And Michael still hasn't learned how to smile and let it go.

But they're gone before the third drop of blood breaks for a fall. And they're _long_ gone by the time the first weapon is drawn.

It's when that first gunshot sounds off over the horizon, that they know the race has begun. That old hick bastard is still alive back there, only because Trevor had stayed true to an earlier agreement that he was severely regretting. That inbred, toothless shithead of a character howls, promising that he’s coming with enough ammunition to turn them both into slices of Swiss.

It’s another day of the same old game, the same old broken record, played again in a new and musty old town. And though these small-time convenience store robberies are the broken records of potential crimes, they sound sweeter with each new, timeless beginning.

And there's always the opportunity to do something different than this, than bounding like a madman through a valley of hard packed snow. Something less dangerous to do. And from time to time, Michael will play around with those ideas. Just for a little bit, though. Because as the tale goes every time, the next temptation will roll in. The next tantalizing job, ripe for the picking, and just sweet enough to take him around the track one more time. And just like that, he will be back. He'll always be back.

"You coming?" Trevor taunts like the snake that he is, from about a world ahead of where Michael is. He's fast, that bony fucker. And he knows it. Michael can’t quite match up, and he knows _that_ even better. Trevor tacks onto his last sentence, but his voice runs off with the body it belongs to. Just barely audible enough to pump up Michael's adrenaline.

"How about we get you a forklift next time, Boy Wonder?”

It’s funny though, because Michael isn’t angry yet. He will be by the end of this run, that’s a given, but right now he can’t manage to harbor anything other than this odd kind of burst of astonishment. And that’s because of Trevor. Not because of anything really special that he’s doing, but just because he’s, well...Trevor. Inches away from the kiss of death, and this guy wants to race back like a schoolboy with something other than a dirty hotel room and an opaque future to look forward to.

And he runs like a kid, too. He’s bounding over stones and branches like each one will earn him fifty points towards the grand prize. He’s breathing hot chuckles into the air, and casting back insults at a hundred miles per hour. He’s the worst kind of idiot. And at Trevor’s unencumbered freedom to spit and swear and sprint stupidly with the police god knows where , Michael feels a spark of patriotism for this town he wants so badly to leave. Just for a moment.

“Ladies and gentleman, it’s this year’s Olympic 100 Meter Final,” Narrates the voice ahead, not a grain of exhaustion present in his breath. “Phillips is in lane one, and ladies and gents, he is _shootin_ ’ for the fuckin’ gold this year. Look at that footwork! Precision! Fucking _precision_ , bitches!"

“Oh yeah?” Michael spits tiredly. “Is he?”

“You bet your sweet ass, he is. Don’t worry about it, though.” He keeps up his side of the conversation as if it were held over tea and biscuits. “Some men are born for gold. Others are fat assholes who only ever see the gold foil of their cheeseburger wrappers."

Okay, so now he’s mad.

And what he's going to do now, is try. Actually, really try. Running faster than Trevor, especially in the snow, is a fucking pipedream. And Michael knows that. Because of course, Trevor is about a million and six pounds lighter than your average burnout, and of _course_ , Michael is the one stuck with the dufflebag. As last time, and every other time before that.

So he's slow. And maybe his fondness for battering and frying his vegetables has compromised some of his stamina. But he's smart, and he's got planning skills, and one hell of a drive to beat Trevor Phillips at anything in the world.

 So if he can just catch up to that sneaky sack of piss and pills...If he can just harvest enough anger and sugar induced adrenaline to put his body into overdrive for one half second...Then, maybe they'll be neck and neck. And maybe, just maybe, Skeletor up there will learn a lesson.

"Clever, Trevor." Michael doesn't savor the rhyme, and braces every muscle in his body for the absolutely fucking farcical amount of footwork he's about to do. "You get that one on the back of a popsicle stick?"

"Nah." He's distant, but he's reachable. And Michael is ready as all hell to close that distance up.  "I read it on this little cross stitch your Mother's got above her bed. Lovely lady, by the way. Only she likes to use her teeth, and frankly, I’m only into that sometimes.."

Oh Jesus _Christ_ , is it on.

Three, two, one, and fire. Anger. What an absolute steroid anger is. And hell if Trevor isn't the number one purveyor. It takes less than three seconds, and Michael is almost close enough to smell the blood on Trevor's face, threatening to trickle into icicles. His shady face is distant. Just as distant as the whine of a police siren. Just one, though. That's just the way that little towns like this work. They don't care, though. One police siren, one angry shop keep, maybe two or three cops trotting sluggishly behind in the field of white behind them.

Michael doesn't care. Whatever game this is, right now, he isn't losing it anymore. Trevor is right there beside him, smirking through his short reign of leadership. Until he's looking at Michael. And until Michael's looking at him. They swap expressions like secrets. And in no seconds time, Trevor knows exactly what to expect.

" _Michael Townley._ " He breaks through the ambiance with his sour voice, and his sour face. His business face, and moreover, his murder face. "Right there in that bag, you've got over five-hundred dollars of someone's hard earned cash."

He pauses his words to catch his breath for a second. To actually catch his breath. But just to catch his words. By no means, does he halt his running. "And I've got both the guns. You do yourself a favor and think that over before you try and do what it looks like you’re gonna’-”

And then it’s over. A shoulder to a shoulder, but one is stronger. And like strange human dominoes with pasts, and favorite foods, and the first signs of frostbite, they’re down. Michael hadn’t tried to fall into a ditch. Nobody tries to fall into a ditch. But snow, as it’s more of an enemy than it is a friend, likes to hide things. Like bodies, and car keys, and sometimes a ditch. When they’d even came upon the road where they are, he doesn’t know. Like any of that matters now. It’s just them, and it’s just the ditch. Save for an overwhelming sense of _“What the fuck.”_

Trevor looks pissed. Nothing groundbreaking there. But pissed isn’t really one emotion for him, either. There are different kinds of it. Some are lethal, and some mean you might just get yourself a slap upside the head, or the could shoulder. Michael says nothing, and only observes.From the trees on the shoulder of the road, a snowbird laughs. Michael does too, a little.

“In the real olympics, just so you’re all good and informed-” Trevor sets it up, and Michael waits for this to blow all out of proportion. “You’d be penalized. You’d be penalized as _fuck_. But you’re lucky.”

Yeah, sure. That he is. Lucky in every sense of the word. That’s why he’s ass deep in a throne of wet snow, stuffing an unreliable gun into the safety of an old Nike duffle that has never, in it’s long life, held anything sports related. Michael deems it safe for the time being, and reclines a little bit. If there’s going to be an argument, he’s at least going to get himself all situated. In all likelihood, it’s about to be a long ride.

“Lucky how?”

Trevor does one of the things he’s best at. Nothing at all. Michael might feel like a dick for thinking that to himself, if it wasn’t for the fact that this friendship was powered by beer and occasional hatred. As are all the best friendships, Michael thinks. Trevor still says nothing.

Michael knocks into Trevor’s leg with his right knee. “Hey.”

“Mmm?”

“Lucky how?”

There’s no doubt in Michael’s mind that his question was heard the first time. And there was no doubt in Trevor’s mind that Michael would ask it again. Trevor was that kind of guy. You wanna’ know the answer to a question, you’ve got to work for it. You want anything at all from him, you’ve got to work for it. This was how it always worked. This was how it always would work. There’s a hefty snort, before there’s an answer.

“I dunno’, Jesus. You’re lucky that this isn’t the olympics? That your stupid decision isn’t gonna’ send you home from the biggest event of your life? That instead of being penalized, you’re just gonna’ get your spine ripped out and repurposed as a stirring spoon?”

“Ah.” Michael nods into the fabric of an itchy woolen scarf, as if he understood that very well. “What was that last part?”

“That your flabby ass is never gonna’ be an olympian?”

“Nah, the other part.”

“Oh.” Trevor nods too, almost offended that Michael _isn’t_ offended. “I’m gonna’ kill you?”

“Ah, shit. Duh! Yeah, that was it.” Michael swats comically at the side of his head, and lets not the smallest trace of worry creep into his face, or onto his face. Old ladies are always telling you that people are only weird, or mean, or creepy to get attention. And this is most certainly not the case in Trevor, but that doesn’t mean the attention isn’t a perk. Or so Michael thinks, at least. It’s funny to see him get all worked up when he can’t get under someone’s skin, anyhow.

But he doesn’t look too offended, does he? He looks weird. Serene, sort of. Like a part of nature that you aren’t supposed to touch, or feed. He’s there in the mounds of white powder, sitting in the same why Michael is. Head up against the wall of the ditch, a pair of thickly gloved hands tapping aimlessly away at the stomach that was never there. Touched not by Michael’s push, or his lack of a bad reaction. Just, well...For lack of a better word, chill.

“When?” It’s Michael’s own voice, but it shocks him when he speaks up. Trevor doesn’t seem to mind it. And he doesn’t seem to hear it, either. It’s not that he’s ignoring it this time. He just genuinely, seriously, does not hear the question. His eyes are nearly shut.

“Trev?”

“When what?” It’s sharp, but it’s not short. Like waking up from a dream that you’ve only just started. Only he wasn’t sleeping, Michael doesn’t think.

“When are you gonna’ kill me?” He prods.

“Tonight.” His answer is quick enough to blend into the end of Michael’s question. In part, that scares him. And in part, it’s the most normal thing in the world. “I’m in charge of food tonight, right? Yeah? Heed this, asshole. You’d better look at each bite carefully.”

“Sure.” Michael chirps, somehow amused by this. “Sure, I’ll do that, pally.”

“No you won’t.” Trevor spits into the forest ahead, and they watch it whiz past the opening of evergreen and dead wood. It looked red. Michael wonders if that could have been a tooth. That guy back at the shop hadn’t disappointed in the punching department.

“You know how you look at your food? You look at your food like you’re gonna’ fuck it, and I’m honestly surprised that you haven’t yet. You’re gonna’ suck it down in two seconds flat like you always do, and by the time you realize you’ve been poisoned, I’m gonna’ be halfway to Florida with your head in my glovebox.”

The world is as lost for words as Michael is. The birds have finally figured it the right time to shut up, and even the lone siren has hung it in for the day. The wind is dead, the air is cold, and the sky is the most unforgiving shade of bright white that they’ve ever seen. It’ll be dark before they’ve left, and that’s alright. It’s kind of beautiful out here.

“How are you gonna’ do it?” Michael prods on.

“I’m gonna’ _poison_ you. You want me to say it thirty more times, or is ten enough?” Michael gives the kind of look that implies a dissatisfaction with that answer. Trevor, who had for some reason assumed that normal people didn’t like to be threatened, was dumbfounded. “What, you want more?”

Michael doesn’t exactly say no.

Trevor tugs down at his ratty old hunting hat, and so returns that famous smirk. Well, says that smirk, _if you’re here for that kind of talk, you came to the right place._ It’s terrifying and interesting, all at once. So are a lot of things about him. It's the weirdest thing, this thing they do. These things they do. They need mental help, Michael thinks. They need immediate psychoanalysis, and straight jackets, and lobotomies, and death a thousand times over. For a small moment, Michael hates everything that they are.But not even for that moment, does he stop listening.

“You know how I’d kill you?” He continues his tale. “I wouldn’t poison you. Nah, that’s too easy. Like that you’ll get off almost painlessly. And we don’t do painless around here, brother, we don’t do that. Nah, I’ll make you sit through it.”

The victim chortles haughtily into the painfully chilled air. “That’s a relatively vague description, for the likes of you.” Though not for long, he supposes. And he’s very right.

“Oh, you thought I was finished?” Trevor interjects casually into Michael’s sentence. And _that’s_ the frightening part. The usual rasp and grain in his voice has cleared out for the day. He goes on to describe Michael’s death as a normal person might describe their day at work.

“I’m _never_ finished, fucko.  I’m gonna’ start off by cutting off all your hair, right? Maybe I’ll take your eyes next, rip em’ clean out and sell them off as ping pong balls. Matter o’ fucking fact, you know what else might work well as ping pong balls?”

Michael deadpans, because yes, he definitely knows what else Trevor thinks might work well as a set of ping pong balls. “Damn, don’t I love it when you talk dirty to me.” His voice is as blank as his current expression.

“Keep your dick in your pants, I’m not done yet.” Of course he isn’t. “We’ll do away with the legs, next. You could do with losing the weight, anyhow. Aaaand, I’ll wear your fingernails as earrings, and top off the evening by eating your liver with some fava beans and some amarone.”

And Michael doesn’t doubt it. Not for a second.Trevor himself is a horror story. And he’s got quite a knack for making them out of every day conversations. From the thing about fingernails, to the mispronunciation of the word “Amarone”. It’s all so very Trevor. The makings of a smirk crack their way onto his face anyway. “So you _do_ read.”

“Hm?”

“Your fava beans thing? That’s Silence of the lambs.” Michael clarifies. “Like you’d know what the fuck Amaraone is, otherwise. By the way, it’s amaro- _nay_. Not amaro- _nee_.”

“Shhh.” Michael almost thinks it’s the wind talking back to him, at first. That’s how quiet it is. It’s not the wind. It’s really, seriously not. It’s Trevor Phillips hushing someone into quiet confusion. His finger pointed like a gun, but held to his lips to hush the disturbance. He is as he was before. That natural lump in the snow that must not, by any means, be bothered to do anything but melt back into earth where it belongs. And that’s exactly what it looks like. Like he’s waiting to seep down through the soil and rocks, and drip right back into hell where he belongs.

But he’s not doing that. Not yet, anyway. Right now it’s just _Shhh_.

“..Fuckin’ scuze' me?"

“In five minutes, we’re leaving.” He drills through the quiet again, and Michael isn’t pretending to be surprised by the change in pace. “And I like it here. But you don’t like anything, and you’ve got the patience of fucking infant, so you were probably gonna’ ask if I wanted to leave pretty soon.”

“Maybe.” Or yes.

“Okay. So give me five minutes.” Whether it’s a plead or a demand, Michael isn’t sure. And that alone tells him that maybe it’s the former. “Five minutes of shutting the fuck up. Can you do that for me, champ?”

Michael’s head falls deeper into the frosty mush behind his neck, as can physically feel himself beginning to heat up. It’s likely just his body scavenging for the last of his body heat. And likelier so, it’s anger. Men of Michael’s kind can only fight off the heat that anger brings for so long. Even in this, the coldest of places.

“Fuck right off, champ.” His retort is not complete without a snarl. The conversation is wrapped up like that, and shipped off to wherever the hell it is that the rest of their aimless dialogue goes. Michael forgets that things, not a moment ago, had been something like pleasant. The sky drips from a cold white, to an indistinguishable mucky grey. There is no sunset, and it seems particularly fitting.

Five minutes. Five minutes more of this sleepy backwater town, and the eery silence, and Michael’s soon to be icecube of an ass. And he doesn’t disturb the silence. Not a peep from him. A complaint about a five minute break would become a ten minute argument. Well, no thank-you. He’ll take the five minute time out and the cold ass.

So here is our Michael Townley, tired and cold, on the younger side of twenty-something, lying in a wet ditch, and suddenly thinking of death. He can’t even really say why, but the thought is there. It’s like death himself is lying right there in that ditch with them. And every time a branch cracks or an owl hoots off in the distance, Michael is ninety nine point nine percent sure that it’s over for him.

Death itself isn’t an inconvenience. At times, death is a comfort. Just not here. Not in anywhere that even remotely resembles the likes of Seneca Hill. The thought of death, and where he’d finally do it, was never far from his head. He just never thought he’d finally croak it in a place that the locals themselves have nicknamed _Seneca Hell._ What a place to die. There’s no funeral parlor, but there’s nudie joint, and more bars than there are churches. Wouldn’t mom love that?

Michael lasts a few more seconds after those lovely thoughts, before deciding to jump the gun on this five minutes thing.  He keeps a hand at the peak of his icy crew-cut, and watches the dirty sky pull into it’s deep black costume. Too dark to stay, anyway. Too cold.

“Hey.” He tries. But he goes about it differently than one might expect. He nudges Trevor’s shoulder patiently, and keeps his voice two notches below impatient for the time being. The results are pretty nice, because he’s not bleeding, or being chastised yet. And because Trevor is sort of an alright guy, when you show him an ounce or two of respect.

“You wanna’ get out of here now?” It’s all in the phrasing, Michael thinks. Asking him what he wants to do. Giving a guy like that the say is a dangerous thing. Because of course the answer is no, and so even when he nods a yes, Michael knows that he’s lying. Trevor isn’t a liar, he’s a criminal. He’s only good at one of those things.

So they silently rise to part with their ditch, and it’s ten minutes of lost navigating before anything worth mentioning happens. In the daytime, the world is only white.In turn, the night is only black. The road and the grass, the trees and the sky. They’re all stitched up together into one massive blob of black void. They follow the single orb of light that Trevor’s flashlight is casting, watching the white orb jerk up and down across the blackness as they trudge on. Michael almost jumps when Trevor speaks up.

“I got somewhere to be, anyhow.”

Somehow, Michael doubts that. But for obvious reasons, he doesn’t let his disbelief slip into his voice. He plays it cool, and he’s good at it. Michael replies carelessly, and lets Trevor believe that he’s got anything else in the world to do than bum around the hotel room and do botched Liza Minnelli impressions.

“Ah, really? That must be why you decided to bitch at me in a ditch for seventeen fucking hours. Where you gotta’ be, anyway?”

Well. He’d tried to be nice about it, anyway.

Trevor doesn’t seem to notice, or appreciate the effort. He steps a little harder, a little faster. “Did _I_ bitch at you, or did _you_ bitch at _me_?”

Michael follows suit, but not as fast. Not as desperately, either. He furrows an eyebrow in question. “I mean, I dunno’. Whatever it is can’t be that important, if you were willing to spend six hours describing my eventual death in detail.”

“Alright, was it seventeen hours, or was it six hours? Pick a fucking number, or I’ll pick one for you.”

Michael snickers roughly, admittedly enjoying this teasing more than he thought he would. There’s a reason that Trevor does it all the time. Maybe this is it. “That doesn’t answer my question, T. No cigar.”

“Okay.” The way that Trevor is talking and the tone in his voice suggests that he’s clenching his teeth. Not at all softly. “Can I get a repeat?”

“You certainly can.” Michael smiles to himself in a way that he’d call anyone else a smug little shit for doing. That’s because he knows that as of now, he’s winning. Winning what, he doesn’t know, or care. But it takes his mind off of the heavy load that he’s only supporting with one shoulder, and it takes his mind off of that whole ' _what if i die in this podunk town and nobody cares enough to bury me'_ thing. Only now, he can’t quite remember what his question was.

“Any day now.”

“Uh.” Michael scratches at the bridge of his freezing nose, not wanting to try Trevor’s patience too intensely. “What’s so important that you’ve gotta’ do tonight?” Alone, Michael might have added at the end of that, if he didn’t know any better.

“What?” Trevor mumbles, and Michael concludes that he’s very done with Trevor ignoring his questions tonight, as he can almost feel the other man furrowing his thick, woodsy eyebrows. “M’ going to The Peach Pit. Don’t worry Mama, I’ll be home by morning.”

Michael isn’t sure what he’s more disgusted by. Trevor’s uncomfortable use of the name Mama (sarcastically or not), or the fact that he’s actually considering spending another hour in the Hotel California of all strip joints. Here’s the thing: The Peach Pit isn’t the worst place in any sense of the word. Quite the contrary. If anything, the Peach Pit is the best place. Which was half the reason they’d decided to come to this town. Billboards, brochures, posters, T.V commercials, fucking gift cards. This place is the Wal-Mart of trashy tit bars. And for some reason, everyone loves it. _Everyone._

“Haven’t we been there, oh, I don’t know. Every day since we’ve been in this landfill of a town?” Michael asks. And that, right there, is the exact reason that he’s a little bit disgusted that Trevor wants to go back. “What’s the idea in going back again?”

“We sure have, Mikey.” Trevor’s voice isn’t his own, but that of an overzealous mother talking to a challenged child. “Didja’ need a calculator to figure that one out?”

“I did, in fact.” Michael spits. “You wanna’ borrow it so you can calculate me a real answer?”

“Watch your _fucking_ tongue.” There it is. Persona number one, the deranged bad boy who can get anybody anywhere to do what he wants, when he wants, if he just puts on some stupid scary bark of a voice. And the worst part is that it almost works.

_‘That’s not an answer either.’_

Michael doesn’t mention that part. Not because he’s scared of getting hit or something cowardly and innocent like that, but because he’s starting to get a creepy ex-girlfriend feel about himself. Whatever. Let Trevor waste another drop of his short life in some overrated strip club. Let him spend the rest of his grimy life in some fucking strip club, for all that Michael cares. He doesn’t give a shit. He’s only curious as to what could possibly draw him into a place that he complains relentlessly about every time they drop in, for yet another night.

And then he remembers the reason that this place is so popular. Not just the strip place, but the entirety of this squirrel eating town in general. It’s a small fact, but it’s a very key fact. Michael almost stops as the thought skips it’s way across his brain. Trevor doesn’t. But Michael watches him drift casually ahead, and wonders to himself if maybe, just maybe, there is truth to his theory.

“Hey bro, uh,” Michael catches up, tugging at the collar to his heavy jacket. “Doesn’t Peach Pit to some kind of special, weirdly ironic show on Sunday nights?” And isn’t _today_ a Sunday night?

Trevor answers suspiciously quickly. Then again, he does that a lot. “There are a lot of things in this world, Mike. Specify.”

Michael forgets to swallow properly, and it makes an unflattering noise. He waits another second, and spends another small eternity asking himself if he really wants to start this right now. Apparently, he does.

“Like, a drag show?”

So he hasn’t ever been to one, and can’t even remember if that’s what they’re formally called, or whatever. But that’s definitely the reason that this town generates any sort of revenue. Because for one night a week in some trashy room usually packed full of hot wings and young girls with broken dreams, there’s, well...A special sort of show. A particularly good sort of show, Michael’s heard through the grapevine…

And back in reality, there isn’t even a reaction. Not even an indication that Trevor has any idea that the world is going on around him. He’s so good at that, he’s so goddamn good at that. And Michael is so fucking tired in so many different ways.

“I dunno’.” And then finally, he decides to come back down to earth without Michael having to forcefully rip him from some convoluted, murder-centric daydream. He even chuckles a little. “Why? You earn a little extra cash on sunday's by stuffing your pork sword into a tennis skirt and putting on blue lipstick?”

“No,” Michael dares to begin. “But that was a surprisingly accurate description.”

And oh dear god, is fear a funny thing. Shove a gun in his face, and Michael will spit in yours. He’s a man of little possessions, and less reasons to go home at night. Fear is not a term he uses loosely. But when Trevor Phillips breaks from his warpath to turn around, and personally get right in your face, you have been granted a license to be afraid. Even Michael.

They’re not even that close, and Michael can feel his breath, his body heat. This indistinguishable aura that is either anger, or some emotion that hasn’t been identified yet. Michael has played the wrong card, here. He isn’t quite sure how he’s going to pay for it.

“I watch a lot of T.V. I assumed you’d be familiar with it.” His breath is hot, and doesn’t lessen in heat as the time goes on. Like this, Michael can see him. Just by the light of the moon. Not nearly enough to make out if he’s in any danger or not. The smears of rusty red are black in this light. His eyes, usually the color of flat coke, are only dark and unreadable. It’s the same guy he knows, the same guy that he’ll know tomorrow. But for the life of him, Michael doesn’t know how this is going to go. “You overthink things, you know that?”

“Hey, overthinking saves my life every damn day. Overthinking makes money.” Michael just shrugs, and makes like this isn’t at all unsettling him in the last. “I assumed you’d be familiar with it.”

Call him crazy, but it almost looks like Trevor is cracking a smile under the lacking moonlight. It isn’t forced, if it’s there at all. Michael doesn’t know if Trevor’s ever done anything he wasn’t one hundred and ten percent sure  he wanted to do. He watches the smile form, and never gets to see it complete. The body it belongs to is gone by the time that Michael falls to the ground.

Trevor is running from the body he just pushed to the ground, and Michael is eating his dust, considering how unrespectable it would be if he just died right here, right now. There wasn’t even a moment after being shoved sharply into the snow that Michael wondered why. He knew damn well why. And he sits here, wondering a million stupid things. And only knowing one.

They never did finish that race.

And as Trevor slips away into the dark sheet of black ahead with the only working flashlight, Michael silently calls himself the biggest fucking idiot in the world for smiling back. Because now he’s up. Now he’s collecting his strength, and his bag, and what’s left of his sanity, and he’s bounding across the ice and snow, too. He’s running. Because that’s the way this game works. Chase, and be chased, and attach yourself to nothing but the comfort of money, and your eventual death. Disobey a few of those rules along the way.

That’s the way it will _always_ work.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh god. This is about to be, uh...Well, this is about to be something. I'll just let you see.

The first day they came to know this town, the sound of that crumby old room key jiggling into a one-size-fits-all lock was the worst noise that either of them had ever heard. And though that was with heavy exaggeration, it sure felt like the truth when they’d first stepped inside. There’s no way to accurately describe a motel room you scored for a mere twenty bucks a night. It’s their own little castle of shit and cigarettes. Even _that_ it putting it lightly.

After today, the noise is welcome.

“Thanks for waiting. Real patient of you.” Michael huffs and puffs. “You’re a gentleman and a scholar, you know that?”

He jogs up to the door of their motel room, in which Trevor has so _graciously_ left open for him.  He peers into the sliver of warmth and light, and feels something like happiness. Maybe not quite that, but it really isn’t as bad in here once you’ve been trotting around in what’s essentially icy hell for most of the day.

“I know that.” Trevor answers without any of the expected flair, and strips off an old beaten bomber jacket.

They’ve already made this place their own. It’s real nice, actually. There’s a polaroid photo (Trevor’s, apparently) wedged into the frame of a painting that Michael can only assume isn’t an original. Their garments are hung above dried wet spots in the carpet, all that’s left of their days before today. In place of the curtains that the motel keeper didn’t hang, there’s a patterned quilt that Michael’s hung up to keep the morning away. That funny little super hero statue of Trevor’s is a few feet below it on the desk. It’s warm in here.

Trevor’s over there in front of the dresser, casting aside his frosty garments, and trashing their room deposit with muck and filth. Michael lets the annoyed snarl curl off of his face, and tries not to be too surprised about it.

“Ain’t so bad anymore, is it?” Trevor turns his head around, stealing Michael’s thoughts and making words with them. There’s a word for that, Michael thinks. Not that he’s going to waste time thinking of what it is.

“I was kinda’ just thinking something like that. Weird.” Michael, the oh-so-civil creature that he is, sits by the drafty doorway and removes his thoroughly soaked winter boots. There’s a hole in the heel of the right one, that he’s just now noticed. These things are just about on their last run, anyhow. Duct tape will cure that right up. It’s funny. He’ll always be able to afford these strange new adventures, but he’ll never be able to afford new snow boots. What a weird life.

“The synchronicity, man.” Trevor says that kind of differently, and in that, Michael feels like he’s somehow making fun of him. “We must be like, cousins or something, _wow_.”

What a little shit. Michael gets a small laugh out of it, so what the hell does he care? Still, he’s got a reputation to keep up, and ends his stream of small laughter with a tiny chortle of _“Shut the fuck up.”_

With that, Trevor tips his hunting hat before casting it away to the floor all together. He disappears wordlessly into the bathroom like a call girl who has done her job, and leaves Michael with that word drying in his mind. ' _The synchronicity, man._  'The lights flicker on underneath the doorway, as does the sad excuse for a T.V. Just like that, their worlds are disconnected for the time being. Synchronically turning, and changing, and existing. Michael sinks into the moth eaten bedspread, and hears the word over and over again in his head.

But...What does it mean again? What was he thinking about?

Why does it sound so good in his head? Good god, this is why Michael shouldn’t be left alone. He starts to think. His brain starts to jump hurdles in his head, and his fingers start to twiddle, and second by second he begins to lose interest in whatever free garbage the T.V is spewing. He isn’t quite sure what it is, but lately, Michael has come down with a deadly case of actually giving a fuck about things. It’s this town. Goddamn it, it’s got to be this stupid town. This hellish succubus of a small town with It’s lousy police force, and it’s wide open fields, and it’s Taj Mahal of a strip club. It’s making him think. It’s making him become just for a moment, more than a criminal with a criminal’s intentions.

So it’s time to leave. Right here and right now, with Trevor’s statue of Impotent Rage as his witness, Michael makes an executive decision that tomorrow they will most formally blow this fucking popsicle stand. It won’t be safe to stay here for long. The cops’ll catch whiff soon that they’re the ones who held up the convenience store. As it always is, it’s time to part with this lovely place.

In a few seconds, Trevor is out of the bathroom. Wet, and oblivious, and just as naked as he always is when the opportunity arrises. And as much as he likes to parade his bare ass and plumbing around the room while Michael awkwardly averts his eyes, he takes to his clothes to dress himself.

“So are you ready to, uh…” Michael decides there’s no better time than the present, and immediately regrets not waiting until Trevor is clothed to bring this up. “You all set to get outta’ here in the morning?”

Trevor gives him no attention, and goes on searching for his clothes with some very pro-focus. But It’s more likely that he likes to keep things weird for as long as he possibly can. “When’d we decide we were leaving in the morning?”

“We didn’t.” Michael feels his teeth grinding, and his patience begins to wear thinner. “I did.”

“Hey, congratulations on that!” Trevor exclaims. The sarcasm doesn’t help with Michael’s patience. Along with the fact that he still hasn’t put any damn pants on. “It just so happens that I never decided shit. That makes one vote for a yes, and one vote for a no. You’re gonna’ have to wait for the recount, bud.”

“Recount? What the fuck are we recounting?” Michael’s fingernails curl into his palms. Because every little fucking thing with Trevor has to be a little bit more difficult than it should be, doesn’t it? “...You don’t wanna’ leave tomorrow, am I gathering this right?”

“Yessir.”

Michael doesn’t want to do this right now for many a reason. He isn’t sure, but he’s pretty certain that there’s a rule somewhere about not arguing with naked people, and Trevor still isn’t bothering to change that. That, and he wouldn’t want to argue about this even if Trevor were modestly dressed. This isn’t something they usually get into scats over. Come to think of it, they haven’t scatted this much since Michael can correctly remember. But it’s been a while. And something is off.

“... _Why_?”

“Jesus fuck, can we hold a civil fucking conversation tonight without you questioning my fucking existence? Why the questions, Michael?” Trevor has a boiling point. Unfortunately for Michael, it’s a low one. His eyes are unsure, and there’s a vein popping out on his right temple. He’s still very naked. Only now, he’s turned around to get a full view of the situation. Michael has a full view of something else.

“How about I ask you some questions? Can I get a goddamn license to do that, or do I have to suck your dick and sign over my masculinity first?” Trevor continues, unfortunately. “How about this one...Why are _you_ so stuck on _getting out of here_ tomorrow?”

“I’m not answering that.” Michael asserts.

“Why in the shit not?!” Trevor slams his fist to the dresser, and everything moves. The statue, the dresser, and the very exposed part of Trevor that swings painfully easily, under the heat of his temper. His arm hair is sticking up. His body, still dusted with droplets of water. He’s tense, and his collarbones are popping out like that of an underfed child. Michael has hit his limit.

“Why the fuck not, Michael?”

“Because I’m not gonna’ argue with you when you’re walking around with your _dick_ swinging high and low!” Michael spits the truth at a new volume for the conversation, and hopes the neighbors didn’t hear that one. Trevor gets it though, apparently. His mouth falls closed, and he stares for a moment in defeat. He takes a second, and turns back around to get dressed. As if he was fucking  waiting for Michael to ask him.

It’s a minute or two before Trevor brings anything back up. By that time he’s dressed and good to go, so Michael is more than willing to answer that question. Only, Trevor doesn’t ask for it again.

“You’re weak.” He zips up his coat, a disgusted look now present on his face. “If you can’t handle a penis every here and there, I don’t know why the fuck we’re friends.”

Michael scoffs crassly. “Thing is, most friends keep their dicks out of each other’s faces.”

“My dick,” Trevor begins, accentuating the organ under his pants with a grabby hand. “Was not in your face. You’ll know when it is, buddy. Now this is the only time I’m ever gonna’ ask someone to stop talking about my dick and fucking _focus_."

“I’d be fucking glad to.”

“Good, because I’m not giving you a choice.” At that, Michael becomes nervous. It’s in Trevor’s posture, and the way it slackens to get right in Michael’s face. It’s the second time tonight they’ve been like that. Somehow, Michael knows that Trevor is about to drop a bomb. He gets that look in his eye, when he’s about to. It’s serious, and it’s angry, and all at once it’s thrilled. The same look he gets right after pulling the trigger.

“ _Everything_ isn’t terrible, Michael.” He starts. There’s whisky and toothpaste on his breath. The last one almost seems foreign. “Not _everything_ is your personal cesspool to shit on. Have you ever stopped and thought that...That I dunno’, that Seneca Hill i _sn’t_ the worst place in the world?”

Michael doesn’t even stop to address the fact that Trevor calling him negative is the pot calling the kettle black. Not now. Something is happening. An idea is there, in his twisted head. And it needs to be exterminated.

“We are _not_ staying here.” He shuts down an idea that hasn’t even been proposed. It doesn’t have to be. Michael sees the look of disappointment that his ill-minded friend is trying to mask. It isn’t working. “You know that, right? You know we can’t stay here?”

Trevor sniffs back the permanent runny nose that lingers in a place like this. “Good, because I wasn’t asking.”

“Then what were you asking?”

There’s a moment of peace that doesn’t feel peaceful in the least. It’s just filled with Trevor, silent from being beaten at the game that he himself had started. And it’s filled with Michael, actually feeling guilty for creating that look of loss and defeat on Trevor’s face. He doesn’t like it, when they get like this. Can’t really be stopped, either. Trevor looks up, after his moment of free thought. The look is different, but not by much. Maybe his face is a little paler. Maybe his eyes are a little bit angrier.

“You know Mike, I don’t rightly know.”

Then the peace is back, and it’s even worse this time because they’re looking at each other. It’s even more strangling this time because Trevor wants to say something, and Michael wants to say something, but nothing seems to connect. Trevor utters the beginning of something, but the words lose themselves on the way to his mouth. He decides it unimportant. He decides that leaving is the next best thing to do.

He’s got his hunting hat, soaked and all, back on his head before Michael can even stand. And then he’s almost gone, stopping to linger in the doorway for only a moment. They both feel the chill of the air. Michael watches a shiver roll down Trevor’s body.

“Maybe...” Trevor looks for those words. “Maybe I’m asking for a week.”

Michael dares to ask more. “...Why’s this so important to you?”

And the weirdest thing happens. As he shakes his head, Trevor begins to smile. Just the tiniest bit. Michael wonders if Trevor has ever faked a smile before this in his life.

“Weird. I was gonna’ ask you the same thing...Synchronicity, man.”

Immediately after that, Michael is abandoned. Somehow he feels that he deserves it. Another part of him is arguing that Trevor is the craziest motherfucker to walk God’s green earth, and nothing he asks or says should be honored in any way. That’s how he feels for a long time. Ten minutes, maybe. Until he’s lying there, back up against the headboard, the voices in his head stopping by for another visit.

_Isn’t that your best friend?_

Yeah, Michael admits to himself. Yeah, he is. He doesn’t know what horrible crime it is that he committed in his past life, but in this life Trevor Phillips is the creature that he calls his best friend. And there are times when that creature would do anything in the world for him. If stealing, or lying, or taking a bullet are not above Trevor, then neither is staying in a crappy town for another week.

_He’d do it for you._

That’s all it takes to push him over the edge. Because in another ten minutes, Michael is gone too. For the dumbest reason, for the stupidest reason in the goddamn world, he is following the searchlights swiveling across the speckled night sky. And oh hell, is he angry that he’s doing this. But it’s for a reason that he’s desperately trying to convince himself, is a good one. He just prays, to whatever god, that it is a good one.

So Trevor wants to stay in this cesspool for another week? Alright. Let’s see why.

The Peach Pit is different, come Sundays. It’s still sprayed a disgusting shade of pink, and strewn with a tacky amount of professional graffiti and hanging lights. No, the real difference here, is the ridiculous line outside the building. On every other night of the week, there’s only one bouncer. No crowd of men and women alike, swarming to get a glimpse of whatever lies past the red ropes. It takes Michael a minute to remember why tonight is so special. Then his stomach drops.

Trevor is nowhere to be found. The bastard is a charmer, and a sneak. Michael wouldn’t put him past charming the pants off of the guy in charge of letting people in. Neither would he put him past using some kind of violence. Nevertheless, he’s not about to wait in this line himself. But the V.I.P line? There are two, maybe three people waiting there. He always had been a good liar…

“What’s your name?”

Nobody with a name like “ _Vito_ ” is going to be easy to mess with. But Michael isn’t just weary of that. Being meaty is part of the bouncer job description, but Michael is pretty sure you don’t have to be seven feet tall and three hundred pounds. But this guy’s doing it anyways.

“I’m here to see Tr-...”

Vito seems to react to that. “Trisha?”

An electric shock runs it’s way up Michael’s entire being. But nobody knows why he’s going so pale except for him, and it isn’t something he’s really wanting to talk about right now. What the next step is, he doesn’t know. But he needs to say something. He needs to say something right now.

“Yeah. I’m a good friend of...of hers.” Real good friend indeed. This is a pretty fucking monstro detail to forget to mention to your best friend. How hard would it have been? ‘Hey Mike, I do drag on the weekends, wanna’ have Spaghetti tonight?’

“She has one V.I.P voucher.” Vito searches his clipboard as Michael practically shits his pants. “For a guy named Mickey. How about it? You Mickey?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.” Michael jumps the gun and fingers his I.D out of his wallet, presenting it with more than a prideful feeling in his gut. “Michael, though. She likes to get cute with the nicknames.”

“So she does.” The bouncer smirks, unhooking the rope for a very lucky Michael Townley. “I didn’t come here as a Vito, y’know.”

Michael doesn’t play nice anymore. Really, because he doesn’t need to. He's already in, and any kindness past that is unneeded. He mutters something in response, and doesn’t even remember what it was once he’s stepped inside. Whatever was in his head before, has left to make room for this scene. What was a glowing shit-castle every other night, is now a _shimmering_ shit-castle. The trashy posters are covered up with curtains. The stink is gone. Everything is sparkling, and everyone wants to be here. People are talking. People are smiling. There are actual streamers on the walls. Michael hasn’t even collected his confusion by the time he’s ushered to his seat.

And in Seneca Hell, of all the places in the world. A place like _this_.

As a V.I.P, the man now going by ‘ _Mickey’_ , sheepishly takes the white draped table up front that the staff have reserved for him. The first time on a V.I.P list in his life, and it’s at a strip club masquerading as a drag club. His cheeks aren’t just pink because it was cold outside. But it gets dark, and the DJ draws ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ to a close, as another song takes the speakers.

Michael isn’t sure what it is, at first. That’s because they’re announcing the first girl. Everyone gets real quiet as the announcer speaks up, and Michael rolls his eyes. Like you’re supposed to be respectful. This is still a strip club.

“Girls and boys, beautiful people alike, _puh-leeeease_ contain your enthusiasm, because we have a star in our midst…” Michael stops listening for a moment, because he thinks he recognizes this song...Is this…’Hey Mickey’? By Toni Basil? All of the sudden, Michael feels the tempting urge to vomit all over his confetti dusted table.

“The star, the legend, the woman who pays the bills here... I give you...T-T-T-Trisha!”

Michael's knees buckle. And he's sitting.

And there she is. The star, the legend, the best friend that Michael is never going to be able to look at seriously again. T-T-T-Trisha. All there, scantily clad in a cheerleader’s skirt and turtleneck that surely didn’t come from any high school around here. Legs jerking side to side with the beat, firm little ass twitching back and forth at this faithful audience. Snapping along to the beat, and refusing to give the crowd anything but her backside for now. Something only Trevor would do.

He’s almost ready to walk out, at the realization that Michael is the first thing Trevor is going to see when he turns around. The goal here wasn’t too embarrass him. Just to catch a glimpse at his night life in order to diagnose why it is that he’s so gaga over Seneca Hell. And it makes so much sense now. Why couldn’t he see this coming from the moment they strolled past the county lines?

“And ladies and gents, that’s not all…” Michael stands up to go, and runs into someone’s thoroughly worked abdomen. When the man grabs at his shoulder, Michael lets a loud gulp roll down his throat.

“We have a special guest in the audience tonight that Trisha would like to wish a warm welcome to…” The voice cuts out again, and Michael looks up at the new bouncer that beats the last one in stature by far. Michael pleads for something with his eyes. What, he doesn’t know. But  the bouncer only chuckles, and nods softly. Michael at this point, is pleading for death as the announcer sweetly coos this next sentence into the microphone.

“Get on up there, Mickey! This one is for you!”

And now, he’s being escorted to the pink plastic chair on the stage, quivering with anger and confusion as he asks himself just where they went wrong in their lives. Who the fuck is Mitch? Is he Mitch? Did Trevor know he was coming here tonight, and if so, why the fuck did he think a lap dance to a shitty song was going to be the best choice of action to tell Michael about all this? And where the _hell_ did he learn to dance like that?

His resistance is futile as he comes face to face with his torture chair. He doesn’t need to be strapped down and bound to it. There’s no hope of escape now. Not with an entire world watching from the dark sea below the stage, jeering and whistling as he only just waits for Trevor to turn around and face this like a real man. That expression doesn’t seem too fitting at the moment.

But here it is. Here is the deep, impenetrable anger in his chest, and here is the moment they’ve all been waiting for. _‘I give you Trisha._ ’ Michael bites into his tongue hard enough to draw blood. I give you bullshit, more like. He hears the scrape of her stiletto, and the sound of her voice as she turns around. And it almost sounds off. Is that...an accent?

“Happy birthday, Mickey baby. Now let me show you how we serve our cake in Puerto Rico...”

Well, Trevor isn’t from Puerto Rico. Neither is Trevor a Puerto Rican drag queen with a hook nose, and a birthmark on her chin. Something, Michael suspects, is very fucking wrong. Things were wrong to begin with. But now they’re really, really fucking wrong. And everybody knows it, all though nobody is one hundred percent sure of what’s going on.

Things in this club are as quiet as they’ve been in a long time. Michael swallows his breath sharply.

“...Trev?”

“Trisha.” She corrects, wearing the smile that a woman usually wears when she’s pissed off to all hell but wants to keep on looking casual so that you know you’re really in for it. “You’re not...Who the fuck are _you_?!...Who the fuck is this, Manny?”

Michael turns his attention from all of this, to the second bouncer. The one that forcefully dragged him into this farce of bullshit and public humiliation. Manny has no fucking clue about anything, and shows this by giving a confused shrug and scratching at his bald head. Nobody else has a clue about anything either.

Especially not Trevor. Especially not Trevor, who is not up on the stage with him in a tasteless cheerleader costume, but rather three or four rows back, gripping a pisswasser like he’s seven seconds away from hurling it into the stage.

But he isn’t. He’s watching. And he’s waiting. And he isn’t, by any means, laughing as the others have begun to. Michael thinks that something has to happen, because something always has to happen in situations like this. Someone yells, someone apologizes, someone explains what it is that’s going on. Something happens. Something has to happen because they’re making eye contact now, and Michael is mouthing a one worded apology.

Trevor gets up, and just like he’s so good at, he’s gone from the building in twenty seconds.

Michael is still onstage.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this might be my favorite that I've done, idk. I hope this turned out as well as I hoped. <3

“Didn’t know you smoked.”

And he doesn’t. He didn’t, anyway. Maybe Michael just never noticed it before. It’s hard not to notice that someone smokes. And it’s hard not to notice something like that about _Trevor_. Then again, maybe it isn’t so hard. Michael seems to know less about him by the hour.

Trevor says nothing in return, and an ash falls from the deathly delight wedged in between his thumb and forefinger. It’s snowing, in a way just small enough to notice. He’s holding his cigarette like a lady would.It’s the same way that Michael’s mother used to hold them,, when sneaking out in between house chores to cut herself a bit of slack. Her nails, always painted with a glossy coat of raspberry wine polish.

Trevor’s nails are chipped with the same shade.

His silence speaks more than Trevor ever could, or would. And it says _“You don’t know everything.”_ Michael begins to believe that more than he ever did before.

“Guess I figured it wasn’t intense enough for you.” Michael joins him in leaning against the brick wall, and it’s clear that he’s completely unwelcome. He does it anyway, and Trevor doesn’t bat a goddamned eyelash. Michael is immediately aware that this isn’t going to be easy. This isn’t the silent treatment. He’ll talk eventually. And when he does, Michael will have wished that it _was_ the silent treatment.

“I mean, I didn’t think you’d be out here smoking crack out of a beer can either, but I’d still put it before you smoking a cigarette.”

The audience is dry, tonight. Not even a scoff of disapproval. Let alone does Trevor spare him a chuckle. The weird part isn’t that he doesn’t look angry. The weird part is that he doesn’t look like anything. That isn’t Trevor Phillips, that’s a lump of wet clay. Expressionless, noiseless, wet clay. At least with clay, you only need to touch it to change it. Right about now, if Michael reached out to touch Trevor? He isn’t completely sure what the outcome would be, but most signs would point to a just, and immediate death.

“You hold it like my Mom does, you know that?”

The risk in that sentence is a dangerous one. But this is a subject that kind of needs to be addressed. Trevor doesn’t say anything (predicted), but Michael is willing to put money on the fact that no, he wasn’t aware that he’s holding his cigarette in the same way that Michael’s estranged Mother is probably holding hers at the exact same moment. Both of them, hating him in similar ways. Taking out their frustrations on themselves. Hurting _themselves_.

“She’s got the same nail polish, too.” Michael says, and by that he means _“I’m not mad at you for this.”_

Trevor blinks, and that doesn’t say anything much, but to Michael it speaks fucking worlds. Something in him knows that Trevor could have held off blinking, shit, could have held off moving until hell swallowed the earth in one mighty, apocalyptic gulp. But he blinked. Michael blinks too. And he swallows the spit coating his throat, and he takes another daredevil’s leap.

“You wear it better.”

The pattern doesn’t break itself. Trevor keeps quiet because he doesn’t give a fuck whether or not he wears his nailpolish better than some irrelevant old lady who Michael disappointed. Michael knows Trevor well enough to know that. And what it comes down to, he thinks, is that Trevor is feeling one of two ways. He either knows he wears it better than that old lady, or he’s concerned with the fact that he’s wearing it at all. Michael is feeling the second one.

And there’s not much left to lose. So he pushes it.

“Trev, are you gay?” Michael wonders aloud.And luck seems to be turning her head in Michael’s direction, because so does Trevor.

“Come again?”

“It’s okay if you are, man, listen.” Michael backpedals drastically. “People are...Like shapes or somethin’, you know? And there are a lot of, uh...Different shapes, but they’re still-”

Before he even has a chance to breathe, the order that things have been going fucks itself up to all hell. Trevor casts his cigarette to the ground.

“Are you _fucking_ with me?” Trevor’s voice is strangely foreign. The anger in it is different, but oh god, is it there. There’s no escalation. One second he’s gasoline, and the next he’s fire. “ _That’s_ what you have to say to me right now? You get what, three fucking minutes to process a proper thing to say? And you hit me with _this_ shit?!”

Michael doesn’t move an inch. For a few seconds it’s just him, and Trevor’s heavy breath. He gets close. Real close. Trevor’s made a real habit out of thinking that getting into people’s faces will get the point across. Only with most people, they’re out cold within a few seconds of it. Michael and Trevor always seem to get stuck somewhere in between. And odd limbo where nobody moves, the breathing is heavy, and the scent of the alcohol on the other person’s breath becomes oddly distinguishable. Trevor’s is gin and juice. Soon, he’s just spitting his angry sermon again.

“Shapes?! Fucking _shapes_ , Michael?!” Trevor gives Michael a push to the shoulder worthy of bruising. “What the fuck am I to you, a fucking triangle? What’s  that make you, huh? A square? So you get to stand here and antagonize me because you’re a fucking square, and you think that just because I’m a fucking triangle all the sudden I need you to tell me it’s _okay_ to be a triangle?”

Michael is, in short, absolutely lost.

“What the _fuck_ are you talking about, Trevor?”

Trevor readies a million different responses, and none of them reach his lips. All that escapes is a monstrous, throaty groan that sends Michael jolting backward into the wall. He scuffs the back of his head and figures that maybe, in some way, he deserved that.

“No.” Trevor decides. “No, I’m _not_ gay. But that also doesn’t reside in your realm of business, on account of the fact that you just _fucked_ me harder than you’ve ever fucked anything in your waste of a life.”

Michael knows what he’s done, and is far from proud of it. But Trevor’s phrasing catches him as a little bit extreme, in several different ways. His hands barrel into his coat pockets, grasping for patience as he bites back.

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“ _I_ don’t know what I’m talking about?” Trevor opens his mouth to laugh. “ “Oh, I am _vastly_ educated on the subject. You fucking _humiliated_ me, Michael! You absolutely, _catastrophically_  fucked me over, and then! To top it off? You chase me out here, and the first thing out of your stupid mouth isn’t even an _apology_? ”

“I owe you an apology? For embarrassing myself, In front of the entire town, plus seventy eight percent of the American population, I owe you an apology?”

“ _Trevor?_ ” Trevor’s voice is deepened, and stupidly slow, and an obvious mockery of what is supposed to be Michael from about ten minutes ago. The reference isn’t lost on him. That moment is a fresh wound. He can still feel himself, bathed in the light of twenty thousand strobes and the smell of Vanderbilt perfume rife in the air. He remembers saying the name, but doesn’t remember why it’s important.

“Pfft. So I said your name.” Michael feels an alarmingly prominent urge to salvage Trevor’s cigarette from the ground. “Big-fucking-whoop, like anyone in there knows you know me. Like anyone in there even knows who the fuck you are!”

Trevor backs down. His anger changes colors, but not for the better. Michael expects maybe a “ _So what if they don’t know me?”_ or a _“You’re still a complete fuckwad.”_ or something along the lines of the Trevor dictionary. He doesn’t expect the silence. Neither does he expect Trevor to look away like that.

“Because...Nobody in there knows you. And this was your first time in there.” He’s still waiting for a nod, or a yes, or a roundhouse kick to the side of the face.

Trevor shakes his head.

Michael is still.

And in this, the smallest of moments, they connect in a way that only the quiet can allow. It’s a silence that allows understanding, and explanations, and a hundred different ways to be confused. They don’t even have to look at each other.

The snow is small, and forgiving. It freckles Trevor’s eyelashes in small bits. He blinks it away to water, and the eyes below his lashes are a subtle red. He’d like to think that Michael can’t see him like this, but he knows that he can. He watches the lonely road, and the empty windows. And Michael watches him. Both of them waiting for something. Trevor, for the end of this. Michael, for an absolution.

“I didn’t know.”

Michael’s fists uncurl, leaving his fingers limp and asleep. Trevor won’t look at him. The smirk on his face is only enigmatic because his eyes don’t match it at all.

“Fuck you.” A crack surfaces in Trevor’s weak voice.

“I _didn’t_.”

“Fuck you, Michael.” Trevor snorts sickly.

“Trev.” Michael pleads, quiet and desperate. “I didn’t-...I _still_ don’t know.”

“Thought you knew fuckin’ everything.”

So did Michael. And for a very long chapter of his life. That was just the way things were. Know all, fear nothing. Michael Townley had accepted the constants in his life as there forever, because that’s what a constant is. Something you never have to fear, or be careful with. What Michael hadn’t realized until now, was that constants usually only applied to objects, or science equations. At times, Trevor Phillips is an equation. But he was never an object.

“I don’t.” Michael admits. “And I don’t know what’s going on right now. I still don’t, man. You wanna’ know what I do know?”

Trevor doesn’t give an answer. Michael gives his instead.

“This isn’t you.” Michael shakes his head, waving his hand about to offer his friend an example. “You’re a dick, Trevor. That’s just you, and that’s fine, but at least you’re an upfront dick. But lately? Man, I don’t even know…You’ve been-”

“What, a _sneaky_ dick?”

Trevor goes for a sarcastic jab, and unwillingly puts the perfect words in Michael’s mouth. The exact truth. Michael even nearly laughs about it.

“Alright, you think you’re being all cute and sassy there, but I don’t think you have any idea how right you are.” Michael stops to list. “The lying, the unwarranted outbursts. Fuck! And- and the fact that you all of the sudden can’t trust me with the simplest fucking thing.I thought I knew you, you know that? I thought I knew you better than I knew myself.”

Trevor waits, and doesn’t revel in the fact that he has finally seemed to stump the last person on earth who’s bothered to speak to him like this.

“But you wanna’ know something? Sometimes, Trevor.” He laughs, now. Feeling insane, and feeling good. Some kind of terrible, amazing release of honesty. “Lately I’ve been wondering if I’ve ever really met you. Whoever you really are.”

“Yeah? Well maybe you fucking haven’t.” Trevor barks against the eerie calm.

“Alright!” Something comes over Michael. He’d like to call it relaxation. Only it feels more like fear. His shoulders fall down. “But I’d really...Shit, I’d really like to.”

This is another silence in which Michael is sure that he won’t make it out of. Trevor is close to finished with this, and disconnected from everything in the world. But somehow, still listening. Somehow still hanging on the edge of every word that Michael has to say.

“So let me.” He breathes. “I know you’re freaked out, but you’ve gotta’ let me know what this is.”

After this, Trevor looks over. Like a spell has broken itself, and he is now allowed to turn his head as he pleases, and react as he pleases. As if all it took was a little bit of honesty. It doesn’t take much for Michael to know that Trevor isn’t going to tell him. Not right now.

Trevor slides down to the dirty concrete, and settles into the wall once again.

“Fuck off, Michael.”

Michael doesn’t. Fucking off comes as naturally to him as it does to Trevor. And that’s why neither of them have done that so far. That’s why Michael feels that isn’t time to fuck off just yet. He makes himself comfortable in the same dirty spot.

“That’s getting really old.”

“It’ll never get old.” Trevor argues, with a kind of sourness in his voice that Michael isn’t afraid of. “Not until you actually do it.”

Michael shrugs, at this point realizing that he isn’t going to get an answer. And that’s okay, for right now. He’s learning to be patient, one argument at a time. And today, he learns to sit and accept the fact that sometimes you know everything, and sometimes you know nothing. Michael sits keenly in the middle, and dares to prod at the mess beside him.

“Yeah, you’d like it if I fucked off, wouldn’t you?”

That mess of a man seems painfully tired. “Yup.”

And all though he is unsure of his actions, Michael knows one thing. On his way into the building behind them, there had been a rite of passage. A little blue stamp, pressed to the hand of each eager patron waiting to sample the nightlife. The kind of stamp that allows the owner to come and go as they please, dipping out for a smoke, or a breath of fresh air every so often. Or maybe a confrontation. The intentions of your exit don’t matter. As long as you’re still stamped, the doors are open to you.

Michael still has his stamp. By the look of it, so does Trevor.

“Sure.” Michael mutters, scooping himself from the ground, finally ready to fuck off as he’d been asked to do so many times.

Trevor is almost comfortable in the fact that his wish has been honored. Then his cold hand is suffering the touch of another. His bony fingers are suffocated by Michael’s grip. He’s immediately ripped from his corner of self-pity, and springs into Michael’s world against his will.

In the shortest words, Trevor is livid. Michael, for once, is too far ahead to notice.

“What the _shit_ are you-” It’s all Trevor manages to sputter out before Michael pulls him back into the populated world.

“I’m fucking off.” Michael grunts, and pulls his reluctant cargo along. “But I’m fucking off into there. And so are you.” Trevor doesn’t part with his solitude willingly.

“I swear on your fucking whore of a mother, if you don’t let me-” And then, they’re back in line at the second door, forced to be civilized. Correction, Michael thinks to himself, as he is made to physically pull Trevor back up to the red ropes. Only one of them is willingly being civilized, here.

“Michael,” Trevor pleads hushedly. It’s a change of pace, but it’s barely a welcome one. It’s almost unsettling. “We can go, alright? We can leave tomorrow, like you wanted.”

Michael doesn’t release his sweaty grip on Trevor’s spindly fingers. He doesn’t lose his interest, either. He lessens his voice, to keep them separate from the rest of the people filtering in and out.

“Trevor,” Michael whispers intensely, just barely craning his head to reach Trevor’s ear. “We’re going back into that fucking show.”

Trevor, just like he’s become so good at recently, is quiet for a moment or two. His eyes are full of a kind of fire that Michael is honestly so glad to see. His hair is sticking up in a million different directions. Michael can physically feel the rosy color spreading into his nose. They’re a couple of idiots in heavy duty coats, holding hands outside a nightclub. Perfect.

“Why are you doing this.” Trevor hisses in a snake-like tongue. His question is somehow a threat.

Michael decides to try something out that he’s been wanting to try for quite a bit now. He lets an uninformed bouncer check his hand, and Trevor’s is checked second. They slip back through the musky corridor of colored lights and tacky carpet. All the while, Michael never lets Trevor escape from his hand. Never during any of this, does he say a word. And it feels so weirdly good to be the one dodging the questions.

It’s loud, and it’s crowded, and they’re likely to drown in a sea of fuzzy pink lights. Nobody notices Trevor struggling like your average bratty child in a super mall.

“Hey,” Trevor spits, as Michael reroutes them to a lonely table toward the back of the building. A place where Michael is less likely to be I.D’d as the guy who almost received an accidental lap-dance not half an hour ago. “Michael! Michael look at me when I’m fucking talking to you!”

Michael does as he’s told.

“Now open your ears, and listen to what I’m about to tell you.” Trevor begins. “You win. You _won_. We can go tomorrow. We can go right now, for all I fucking care. You don’t have to be in here. Michael Townley, you fucking look at me before I twist your dick clean off of your body.”

Michael, who hadn’t realized that his attention was drifting to the main show, does as he’s told again. It’s different, when he looks back. Trevor’s mad, sure. He’s always mad. But this time, it’s weird. This time he looks almost nervous, under this wash of bad lighting.

“Don’t do this. Whatever the hell you’re doing, don’t you fucking dare do it. _Please_.” Trevor tries to strike a chord in Michael, and unwillingly succeeds. “We can go. We don’t need to be here, just-...Please, can we just-

“I’m sorry.”

Trevor frowns. Someone up there on that stage is doing a cover of some old song he hates. It’s too warm in here. Michael is apologizing. They’re still holding hands. This might just be the most uncomfortable he’s ever been.

His eyes unknowingly drift down to watch Michael’s hands. Michael looks down too. Their hands are a sweaty tangle, and so are their minds.  A force of habit that has them both separating their hands on equally awkward terms.

“Keep your _grubby_ shit off my person, thank you very much.” Trevor forces off any indications of affection, and retreats back into his cold little bubble of personal space. Michael snorts rudely, and waits for Trevor to leave. He isn’t accepting the apology, or even giving it a second look. Neither is he leaving. Michael lets himself start to smile.

Whatever that was, they let it roll off. That isn’t to say they let it roll off easily. It’s still a mess of stolen glances, and awkward shuffling to get comfortable as they wait for the next seamless act to fill the empty stage. Michael’s hand is still clammy. He can’t bring himself to look away from it.

But whether or not they’re ready to watch it, the next woman slips through their radar, and she’s performing before they have a chance to catch her name. She’s tall, and built, and slathered in some neon paint that Trevor makes a comment about being able to smell from over here. The only conversation he’s willing to make is harsh critique. Expected.

Michael listens to half the act, before forcing himself to strike up a conversation that most days, wouldn’t be awkward.

“I thought you liked Bowie.”

Trevor slinks back into his chair, too cool for this. Too cool to tear his vision from the stage.

“Like an alligator bite to the ass, I like Bowie.”

Michael ignores that bit, just as well as he ignores the urge to roll his eyes.

“This ain’t a bad song.” Michael opines, and orders himself a drink as the waiter rolls around to their side of the spectrum. Trevor makes his a double, for understandable reasons. “He’s good, y’know. They don’t teach bends like that in any dance class I’ve ever seen.”

“Assuming you’ve ever set foot into a dance class to begin with.” Yet, Trevor digresses. “And it’s she, Michael. She’s good. I thought you had at least a little bit of culture, but hey. I also thought you had a pretty good sense of judgement. I’m learning a lot about you tonight.”

“And I, you.” Michael thanks himself that Trevor doesn’t have a glass to throw yet, and diverts the conversation back to it’s rightful topic. “Thanks for your lesson in politically correctness. She ain’t bad.”

“Mhm.” They are blessed with their drinks, Trevor not hesitating to order his second before he even touches the first.

“And this really isn’t the worst song that’s ever been written.”

Trevor doesn’t spare another _Mhm_ on that one. Through that, Michael either detects a hint of his run-of-the-mill negativity, or the distinct smell of jealousy. That lady up there _is_ a pretty good dancer…

“You’re a rotten liar, I swear I’ve seen you get crocked with this song in the background like, at least twice.” Michael waits for a correction, but doesn’t even get that. He finds himself forgetting that he still hasn’t gotten that apology yet.

“ _C’moooon_.” Michael teases, bumping Trevor’s shoulder in the same way that Trevor might, if their positions were switched. He’s smiling all the way, now. Slipping into a throaty, and perfectly horrible David Bowie impression.

“ _Put on your red shoes and dance the bluuues_.”

His small audience of one is less than approving. But his frown is less there than it was before.

“You sound like Buffalo Bill took it down the throat one too many times.”

Michael laughs at that. It’s a real laugh. And the real breakthrough is this: Trevor almost chuckles. It’s easy to miss at first, but Michael is paying more attention to this son of a bitch than he ever has in his life. He can see it in the way that his lips are curling down into an exaggerated frown. The way that he rolls his eyes, not all the way, but just a little. He’s seen that look before. And he begins to think that maybe he’s starting to win this.

“Seriously,” Michael shakes his head at the table he’s beginning to stain with that his empty glass is leaving. “It’s a great line. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues. You know what, I’ll bet you something.”

“Oh yeah? What’ll you bet me, kiddo?”

Michael hates that. Kiddo. Trevor knows this. So chances are, he’ll use it again by the end of the night.

“I’ll bet you I can convince you that _Put on your red shoes and dance the blues_ is the greatest line to ever be put down in some half-baked pop song.”

“I’ll bet you’re full of _shit_ and _lies_. But then I'd win, wouldn't I?” Trevor lets his chin settle into his hands, and silently agrees to bet nothing but his patience. Michael wastes no time in beginning.

“See, the red shoes? They’re symbolic.” He explains, making good use of his hands. Trevor scoffs loudly, and deems that he’s already done with this. “No, okay, shut up. I’m not done yet. The red shoes are a comfort mechanism, or what have you. I can’t think of a better word for that." 

“A security blanket? Or what have you?" Trevor raises an eyebrow, and Michael snaps his fingers in approval.

“Fucking exactly. Hold on, shut up, I’m not done. Alright, now dancing the blues. What do the blues mean to you, T? Sadness? Depression, whatever the fuck life has to hand out for it’s unwilling participants?”

Trevor doesn’t nod. He’d very much like to see Michael make a fool of himself, here. Then again, he’d very much like to see where Michael is going with this.

“That’s what dancing the blues is. Dancing the blues is _living your shitty life_. It's letting life fuck you up the ass, and living with it. So when one puts on their red shoes, would you, more or less, suggest that that person is putting on their red shoes to make dancing the blues more tolerable for them?”

The anger has slipped from Trevor’s face. Now he’s confused, and he’s lost, and he’s a little weirded out, but right there. Right there, there is a smile beginning to rise from the depths of this all.

“ _God,_ you’re fucking gay.” He retreats into a generic fruity cocktail, but Michael signals for him to look back up.

“Hey.” Michael prods. “Would you?”

For a moment, Trevor is considering this. Not really considering Michael’s theory, but considering whether or not he wants to give Michael the satisfaction of a win. The lights are coloring Michael’s face in a very different way. But just barely, Trevor can make out such focus that he has never seen from anyone but Michael.

“Sure, kiddo.” Trevor moves onto his second or third drink, sipping at it nonchalantly. “In some other world that ain’t this one, maybe that sounds plausible.”

Michael wins. He sucks down his most recent drink. He doesn’t stop there.

“What are your red shoes, Trevor?”

It almost seems like the room should quiet itself. But there is a planet outside their own. There are other lives, who only see two young men with dirty fingernails, and intense expressions. But the image, somehow, is the same. The taller one is still leaning into the shorter one. The shorter one refuses to move. They stay like that, in that game of russian roulette. For a little while, they do.

“ _My_ red shoes...” Trevor reaches into his drink, thumb first. It spills over, cherry red liquid sploshing over onto the white table cloth. He searches, and searches, losing his entire hand soon in his dirty glass of ice and hand. Michael watches until it’s over. Trevor pulls a cherry from the bottom of his glass, and stuffs it into his open mouth. He licks his fingers. Michael grimaces.

“Well? Why doesn't your lazed and entitled ass take a good ol' fashioned guess?"

Michael then makes an executive decision to throw caution to the wind in a very different way. One second, he’s eyeing the unofficial dance floor in the corner of the room that a good selection of drunken lovers and friends have taken to. The next, he’s eyeing Trevor with a stupid idea in his eyes.

“Come dance.” He demands.

“With you?” Trevor sucks at the tip of his index finger.

“Whatever.” Michael takes the rest of the drink in one easy gulp. “With _everyone_. With me, I don't give a fuck.”

“Now why on _earth_ would you suggest an idea like that” Trevor toys with his enthusiasm. “Because I’ll be drunk within the next five minutes, and you wanna’ make an idiot out of me for the second time tonight? Because you’re an absolute bag of dicks, and don’t know any better than to poke a bear when you’re already walking on _thin_ fucking ice?”

Resistance is futile. Michael already has him by the hand again. “I dunno’. Yes. No. Shut up and enjoy something, please.”

It’s god awful over here. The people are either too young, or too old to know that this is a performance night, and dancing isn’t really the norm. It smells like piss and cherry pepsi. Michael’s hand is unbearably sticky, and there’s a girl crying in the corner. It’s essentially high school with drag queens. And Trevor doesn't look enthralled. It’s a wonder that he hasn’t kicked Michael in the knee yet.

"I didn't say yes to this." Trevor grumbles, and only really leaves Michael with one response as he scans the area for a decent spot.

"You didn't say no."

Trevor wears annoyance well. It only worsens when Michael starts up. He dances like a college boy. His legs are stiff, and he’s way too confident about it, and his series of stupid faces are too much to handle right now. If Trevor didn't know any better, he'd label him a perpetual virgin in unflattering shoes.

“So you can’t sing or dance.” Trevor eases into the music, much more naturally than the likes of his counterpart. “Hmph. Maybe you _are_ straight.”

“I told you to shut up and enjoy yourself.”

Trevor looks like he’s just heard the best joke of his fucking life. “I _am_. This is what I like to do, if you haven’t noticed. Watch you make an idiot out of yourself, and call you out on it. We’re a great team.”

“Fuck right off.” Michael’s face contorts into annoyance. It contorts into something else when the song changes. They hadn’t quite realized it, but that had been the tail end of the song that they’d joined in on. Now, it’s...Well, it’s less danceable. And it’s kind of not really a dance song at all.

“Is this?…”

“Van- _fucking_ -Morrison.” Trevor turns his attention to the lady in the white sequined number up front who’s decided that her act of choice is going to be set to the only slow song to ever be played in a strip-joint drag-club combination building. He watches her with a lost look. He places the title hazily, and from memory.

“Into the mystic.”

Michael frowns. And then he’s shuffling confusedly about, because the floor is opening up because people are dancing close. Some are leaving. Those people with the right idea. Michael is scratching the back of his head, and searching for words in his head full of static and music. It isn’t a bad song. It was never a bad song. But it’s pushing things.

“Damn, that sucks.” Michael accepts things as they are, and turns on his heel to fly the coop. One might accept Trevor to do the same. Michael sure had. And then something was holding him by the wrist. Something is holding him by the wrist.

Someone. Someone sure looks like they’re ready to forgive.

“Uh.” Michael traces the look on Trevor’s face. It’s clean, and neutral, and it’s telling him that the anger is gone. But there is a new face, there. Neither of them are quite sure of the emotion that it exemplifies. "Listen, let's not, I was just kind of joking around with the-"

Trevor tugs once. And then twice.

"Shut up, Michael."

It’s a mexican stand off, again. There’s a moment where Michael says something else, only neither of them remember what it is. This is part of the forgiving process, and that’s the only way he’s going to accept it. At the same time, Michael isn’t really sure why he wouldn’t accept it in the first place.

Because it’s so innocent. Weirdly innocent, because nothing with Trevor could possibly fit that description. But now they’re doing this, and that’s exactly what it is. It isn’t close, or romantic or anything. Trevor has him by the shoulders, and Michael by Trevor’s. They’re moving to the beat as best as they can. They’re shuffling slowly, and almost sarcastically. Michael laughs awkwardly. Trevor doesn’t falter.

And they’re the worst people out there. But nobody notices. Focus is a beautiful thing. Everyone over here is awful in their own way, but nobody cares to notice.

“You like Van Morrison?” Michael raises a desperate point of conversation.

“ _God,_ no. Thought you knew me better than _that_.” He slides his hand ever so slowly past Michael’s shoulder, hitching an arm around around his upper-back. “This, though. This song could be his redeeming quality, if I handed those out.”

Michael might laugh, if he wasn’t having war flashbacks from every middle school dance he’d ever been to. But the funny thing is that it isn’t so bad. Yes, it’s horrible, and awkward, and the height difference is making them look like a pair of lost carnies, but those are only his second instincts talking. His first instincts are telling him that it’s warm, over here. That maybe it doesn’t smell too bad. That maybe, there is a slight chance that this means things are going to be okay. It’s hard to tell. Trevor is terribly unreadable.

Michael tries his hand at reading him.

“You like this town, huh?”

A shrug rolls off of his beaten shoulders. Trevor moves in closer, and Michael subconsciously starts to count how many drinks Trevor really had. More than three, it’s likely. It’s also likely that this isn’t a result of that at all.

“And this place?”

He feels it. Michael feels the truth moving from the pit of Trevor’s stomach, to the top of his chest in a sigh of stifled exhaustion. His honesty releases like a breath of stale air.

“Yeah.”

There’s a moment of pause before he feels anything else. Then it’s the feeling of Trevor’s forehead meeting his own shoulder. And it’s weird. It’s the weirdest thing. But it’s okay. It’s okay because the song is halfway over, and it’s okay because something deep down is screaming that Trevor needed this.

“That’s okay. That’s totally fine, man, I don’t-... I never would have-...” Michael watches the source of the pressure on his shoulder. “You could’ve just told me.”

Somehow he knows that he couldn’t have. Somehow he knows that it had to happen like this. Michael chews at his bottom lip, and exhales. He thumbs back a strand of Trevor’s woodsy hair, and accepts the fact that there is nothing left for Trevor to say at the moment. He breathes into Michael’s shoulder. It’s almost like sleep.

“Everybody has their red shoes. For the blues, and what the fuck have you.” Michael suggests quietly. This song, this horrible, tacky, and magical song insists on going on for what could be years. And it’s the stupidest, tackiest, most cliche song that history has to offer. But it really isn’t bad, is it?

_‘And together we will flow into the mystic’_

And maybe that doesn't sound too terrible, either.

It threatens to end. People are clearing out, and the lights are dimming out into their normal colors again. Soon they’ll be out into the normal, naturally produced moonlight. Each of them, with a new monkey on their back to ignore until they inevitably forget that this ever happened. Until the next time some tired old radio station comes across this song.

They don’t need any more conversation. But there are a few moments where Trevor is breathing different than normal. Michael doesn’t think much of it. The guy was probably tanked before he got here. Let alone is his health ship-shape to begin with. But he is the slightly more sober best friend, and his responsibilities include making sure that Trevor doesn’t collapse to the dirty carpet.

“Trev?” Michael beckons quietly.

The music rolls into it’s famous last words. Trevor doesn’t raise his head for his own famous last words.

“I like to wear women’s clothes, Mike.”

Michael breathes out again, as the largest weight he has ever suffered is lifted from his shoulders. Trevor doesn’t cease to move. Neither does Michael. And that alone, all though he doesn’t know it, is the most important thing he could have done.

“I know, bud.” Michael tries his best to give solace. And he has absolutely no idea how good he’s doing at it. “I know you do.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is pretty long, but. Wow. Y'know. Stuff happening. A lot. Hope you enjoy~

“I told him this thing.” Michael begins. His voice is gliding above the glittery hum of sappy sex music and a whisper of deep voices. “This thing about red shoes.”

There is a second voice, harrumphing politely in this stuffy little broom closet of a back room. That’s the kind of office they give you, when your show only runs one night a week. And on the holiest of days, none the less. The body that the voice belongs to is fondling his chin in thought, peering at Michael through a set of thick horn-rimmed glasses.

He’s large. He’s threatening. And on Sundays, his name is Trisha. Trisha La Reine. His eyes are angry, and his legs are perhaps the best that Michael has ever seen. They’re hidden today, in acid washed Levi's, but Michael would know them anywhere. They run this place. They run the lives that this place has created.

“That thing-” Trisha, who’s just John for today, extends a pointer finger. “Could be a lot of different things, Mickey. You can elaborate, or you can be done here.”

“Michael.” Michael corrects. There’s just a drop of hostility towards the name ‘Mickey’ in his voice. John does a better job of detecting it than the busted fire alarm over their very heads. It comes with the job. John cracks his knuckles noisily, and it’s almost like the room ices over.

“That’s right, you’re _not_ Mickey.” John corrects right the hell back, because the word that is sweetest on his brain right now is _apology_. People must admit their faults in order to move on. In order to get what they desire. And this sweet little impostor with his cute cheeks, and his screamingly heterosexual haircut, are taking up quite a bit of time here.

“You’re not Mickey because Mickey is _my boyfriend_. What’s that make you, sugar? What is it that I called you earlier?”

“A scrubby little vagrant in outdated jeans.” Michael leaves behind his verbal weaponry, and scratches at his bicep with a strange new type of anxiety in his movements. “Can we talk about the red shoes?”

“That’s purely up to you, Mick.”

The nickname dressed in sarcasm is taken with a grain of salt. Michael, a fish out of water degree, is suffocating. His knuckles are cold, and they’re white, and they’re so desperately wanting to crash into something. Flesh, preferably. He reminds himself what he’s here to do. He’s here to do good. He’s here for Trevor.

“I coined this theory one time. When I was really...God, _really_ stoned.” Michael pauses long enough for John to assume that the conversation is over.

“Sounds like an average Saturday night. You’re losing my focus.”

“It’s about David Bowie. David Bowie and his song _'let’s dance_.'” Michael starts off with that hook, and his listener has no choice but to fall into silence. “Just one line, actually. It’s that line that goes _‘Put on your red shoes and dance the blues’._ ”

John remembers it. So does everybody with ears, and a decent knowledge of the current pop culture world. But it’s a favorite, here. Even on nights that aren’t Sundays. Heck, it’s a favorite everywhere. Only John doesn’t know why it concerns him, his show, and some entitled little idiot with a waning friendship.

“I think it’s cool to think of it like...Like the red shoes are a comfort mechanism. A security blanket, kinda. Dancing the blues represents dealing with life, and what it has to throw at you. So when you put on your red shoes to dance the blues, you’re kind of...Doing what you need to do to survive, I guess.”

The quiet that follows could deafen. The eye contact is even worse.

“It’s not-...Fuck, don’t look at me like that, you can’t look at me like I’m all weird and different when _you_ -...” Michael bites his tongue, and his silence is apologetic. John mutters something that looks like strike _two_. Michael hurries it up for his own sake.

“I told him that.” He swallows loudly, chewing habitually at his bottom lip. “I told him that, and...I think the two of you slip into a similar pair of red shoes.”

“And I’m gathering from that…” John clasps his hands together, his neat fingernails glistening remarkably. “That your friend has a fashion sense that runs a little bit deeper than your own. That you think he likes to use drag as a coping mechanism. That you think _we_ use this as a coping mechanism.”

The burn in John’s glare suggests that Michael is dangerously approaching the door to strike three. He backpedals like a madman.

“No, no, listen. That’s not what I’m-...Listen, you don’t know this guy.” Michael reasons. “Not like I do. So maybe you don’t use it as a coping mechanism, but he-...He...He doesn’t even do this professionally. I’m pretty sure he just slides into a petticoat and slaps on a pretty hair clip every time he feels bad about something.”

“I bet it’s easy for you to reduce it to that, huh?” John peers into Michael with the kind of look that suggests he knows everything. Michael faces it with nothing less than confusion because this isn’t his own culture. He doesn’t argue. Just aims to learn.

“...And by that you mean?”

John gives Michael only a moment’s glance before he leaves his chair to shut the door. To seal them away from the outside world who from the look of these doors, could potentially not hear him scream. That’s what Michael’s mind jumps to, anyway. Everything comes back to murder, nowadays.

But no weapon is drawn but the sharpest glare you’ve ever seen. John sits, legs crossed at the ankles. Hands folded in his lap as if he isn’t about to verbally fry someone. In that sense, he fires.

“I don’t know why you’re here, but you better not be here to tell me what my world is about.” He spits, tamer than Trevor, but holding the same fire.

“I’ll be fair with you, honey, because one of us has to be. So I’m gonna’ tell you what I’m thinking. I’m looking at your shoes, and your cold complexion, and the lack of life in your eyes, and I’m assuming that you’ve never so much as worn a pair of heeled shoes in your life. Let _alone_ stepped into a dress. Can I assume that?”

Michael snorts. “You must be some kinda' mystic.”

“Oh, just wait till I get going.” And so, as Michael himself predicted, John gets going. “You think your friend needs help. Your help. You think there’s something wrong with him, and you can’t quite pinpoint what it is, but you know-or at least have recently discovered-that he has a soft spot for life’s frillier things. How quaint for you. What an easy thing to blame it on, huh?”

He hadn’t anticipated it. But for the first time in a long time, Michael is offended by something. He knows that it’s getting to him because his fingernails are nearly penetrating the leather upholstery on his chair.

“I take back the psychic thing.” Michael blurts. “You think you know shit, but you don’t.”

“But you want my help.” John points out, teetering somewhere in between completely calm, and drawing the emergency bar rifle from the wall behind them. “And maybe I wasn’t right about the last thing, but I’m telling you right now. If your aim is to flush the frilliness out of him, then I can’t help you.”

Of course he can’t. No one can. A person like Trevor doesn’t have habits. They have traits, and the habits that they adopt become traits, and never do they enter a phase that doesn’t become a part of their lives.

Trevor wears dresses. Not professionally. But he wears them, and he likes them,  and it’s okay. Michael doesn’t have to convince himself that it’s okay. It’s just a chapter of him. It’s complex, and nobody wants to read it or understand it, but it’s there. It isn’t going anywhere. It’s as much a part of him as Michael is.

“I don’t wanna’ change him.” Michael shrugs his aching shoulders. “I just don’t think...I dunno’. I don’t think he should be so afraid of it.”

“You think he’s afraid of it?” John asks an honest question, and Michael spends more time thinking about it than he feels that he should. He turns up an answer that he hadn’t anticipated. Not until now.

“Yeah. But just a little bit.” Michael comes to a decision, right at that miraculous moment. “I think he’s afraid of me.”

There’s a piece of quiet that John leaves empty. Michael, after a moment, realizes that it means he’s supposed to talk more. He doesn’t know when a quick visit to a strip club in hopes of a small favor became a corny therapy session, but he rides it out anyway.

“And I think that’s why he didn’t tell me for so long.” Michael sucks at his chewed up lip, threatening to draw blood if he keeps it up. “I feel like he’s been doing this for longer than he wants me to believe.”

John’s gaze doesn’t falter. He breathes first, then shifts a little in his seat. “And what is it that you think I can fix for you, Mick? How may I be of service to this?”

Michael doesn’t have to think. He’d decided this a long time ago.

“Put him in your show.” Michael pleads. “Just one night.”

“No.”

“I’ll pay you.” Michael offers. “I don’t think you understand how serious I am about this.”

“And I don’t think you understand that I’m not a charity case.” John quips. Michael feels guilt weeping in his stomach as he begins to lose this case. “How do you think I made my living, in a rinky-dink little town like this? You think I made it by stuffing every random hick into my show who makes an offer? Sweetheart. That’s not how I-”

The room is hot, and Michael is suddenly standing. There’s a mysterious pressure in his chest, but a familiar pounding in his head. All signs point to anger, but Michael isn’t coherent enough to diagnose it. Within the walls of this pink room, he’s seeing red all of the sudden.

“He isn’t a hick.” Michael shakes his head hotly. “You know, you’re really a piece of work for someone who’s trying to peg me for being judgemental. And I’ll bet it’s easy for you to assume that, but you don’t know a goddamn thing. He’s a good guy. He’s a piece of shit, but who the hell isn’t? You don’t know him. Screw off.”

It’s strike three, but John doesn’t say anything because this is a very interesting development. He’s interested, now. Only Michael doesn’t know why until that smirk curls onto his face. Until he’s talking again.

“Oh my god.” He utters. “You’re in love with him.”

Michael bites down one more time, and his bottom lip finally begins to bleed. The juices in his stomach are turning like they haven’t moved in years. He’s still offended, and he’s pissed off, and for a reason that he isn’t even going to try to touch, he’s somehow relieved.

“Don’t make it like that.”

John doesn’t even move a muscle. He accepts it as the truth, and as the truth is never shocking, he doesn’t react. “I’m not making it like anything. I’m making it out exactly as it is.”

“No,” Michael retorts, fury coursing through his veins like a shot of adrenaline. “You’re making it into something it isn’t, and you’re being a fucking creep. You have nothing to run off of, you’ve never even met the two of us at the same time, and you’re a fucking creep. He’s my friend. I’m sure you’re familiar with what a friend is.”

“I don’t have time for denial.” John peers at his wrist to check the time on a watch that doesn’t exist. “Figure this out somewhere else. Maybe take a trip. Maybe come back when you’ve figured yourself out.”

“I won’t be back.” Michael is already halfway out the door, speaking at a volume that John is less than appreciative of. And people notice.  It’ll definitely be something he’ll have to explain to the rest of the staff later. “You’re wrong, you know. About everything.”

“I’m right about more than you think.” John doesn’t even bother to look up from his fingernails. “But If I am wrong, then it’s nice that you two can dance together like that. While, you know. So obviously being nothing more than friends.”

Michael closes the door without another word. But once he’s beyond the door, he stops against his will. He traces his mind back to a few nights ago, and traces the faces and expressions of the guards and nightly staff that are sprinkled around here. He wonders how many people saw. Whether or not they have the same idea floating around in their spongy, gin-soaked brains.

Not that it matters. He leaves knowing that he won’t ever be returning to the plethora of skin and addiction that is The Peach Pit. He leaves empty handed.

It’s way later that they’re leaving Seneca Hell all together. Michael can’t say he minds all too much. The guilty pangs in his stomach are lessening, as they cram the rest of their possessions into a 1978 Buick Lesabre that doesn’t belong to them. Trevor doesn’t comment on how disgusting the baby-shit brown paint job is. That’s how Michael knows that today is weird. And that tonight will hold a long, and difficult car-ride.

They zip past an almost comically cheery goodbye sign, and are granted the privilege of being officially out of Seneca Hill. In the rear view mirror, the collection of buildings and cardstock homes sizes itself down, and down, and down into memories. Never look back, the wise ones say. Michael catches himself doing exactly that. He knows that Trevor is doing the same. He doesn’t need to look. He kind of doesn’t want to.

“And good a good riddance it is.”

Michael adjusts the muffler scarf around his neck, and looks over to Trevor as if to catch him nodding in agreement. Big shocker, there. He isn’t.

“It’s good that we’re getting out of here when we are.” Michael comments. “Another night here wouldn’t have done much more for us than get us shot for that shit we pulled back at the convenience store.”

“Yep. By the _single_ police officer on duty.” Trevor’s sarcasm is comforting, but not by much. “That would have been hard to evade. We definitely wouldn’t have made it out of that one.”

“Shut up.” Michael bristles. The road ahead is an unbroken white, but the snow isn’t coming down anymore. It’s nearly past morning. “You know what I mean.”

Trevor doesn’t hear him, or really choose to anyway. He’s got his feet on the dashboard, and the topic apparently free from his mind. One he doesn’t want to argue on, Michael figures. Which is rare, but Michael isn’t protesting it. Trevor pushes the grime up from underneath the fingernails with a toothpick. Besides that, they’re fleshy and clear. The polish is gone.

“D’you know where we’re going?” Trevor provides a comfortable constant in that question. He asks it every time. Usually, Michael has somewhat of an answer to play around with. Something in him today goes for honesty.

“I never do at first.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Michael puts his frustration into a glare. He shoots it into a gaggle of pines crowding the left side of the road. He doubts Trevor’s statement very much. But he’s a smart man, and maybe a good friend. So he keeps his peace.

Trevor doesn’t care to do the same.

“Yeah, go ahead. Just keep driving like the desultory fucknut you are.”

“I can’t even tell when you’re being sarcastic anymore.” Michael admits. Trevor allows himself to snicker the slightest bit. In a way, that is exactly what he’d intended. And in a way, it’s just natural. In a second it’s as if he’d never laughed at all.

“I’m not being sarcastic about you being a desultory fucknut. That you can confide in.”

“That’s a big word for you.” Michael smirks to himself, and fights the shivers by  cranking up the heater a notch or two. “You’ve been using a lot of those lately, haven’t you?”

“Desultory.” Trevor chirps, his words lingering on little white clouds in the bitter air. He speaks like the dictionary definition is right there on the fucking dashboard. “Having no direction, plan, or purpose.”

“I knew that.” Michael mutters. It’s funny. He can’t quite remember whether or not he’s lying about that. “You’re not the only one who took basic High School English.”

“Then you know that it’s exactly what you are.” Trevor quips, his points and opinions fresh on his brain.

“Then maybe I do.” Michael hopes to ends it there, but has a distinct feeling that Trevor has other plans for the conversation. “Maybe I am. And I’m sorry that there ain’t much I can do about it at the moment, but life decisions are hard to come to at eight AM.”

Trevor raises his dark eyebrows, and silently calls Michael pathetic in that one motion. There’s an idea on his mind, and an overwhelming sense of judgmentalness in the way he wrinkles up his face. He opens his mouth to free them.

“You could let me drive.”

Michael, for no reason but shock at the idea of breaking one of their oldest traditions, laughs.

“Could. I definitely could.” He nods his head, easing up on his grip of the steering wheel. “But _can_ and _will_ are drastically different things, pal."

“Not with you.” Trevor, who isn’t skimping on the bitterness, goes on to provide an example that Michael never asked for. “If you _can_ eat an entire casket of donuts, you _will_. Now _should_ , is an entirely different kettle of fish.”

“A casket? A _casket_ of donuts?”

Trevor shrugs. “Call it ironic foreshadowing.”

Michael lets that one slip into the folder of jabs that will eventually lead to an inevitable psychotic breakdown. Then, he does something that the two of them aren’t very good at.

“...So you’ve never offered to drive before. Which you shouldn’t feel to bad for, because I’ve seen the way you drive. But what’s changed?”

They glide past another option to turn. Then another destination sign, and a dinky little feed store, and seven hundred and two other choices of places to potentially find the next point of interest. Michael doesn’t give any of them so much as a first look.

And _that_ , is what Trevor finds his answer in.

“Look at you, you don’t know where the fuck you wanna’ go!” Trevor peers into Michael as if too pull a reaction from his hollow head, and is given nothing. “Not in life, and _not_ in the next five minutes.”

“And you do?”

“ _Fuck_ no.” When they pass a sign boasting the whereabouts for the world’s biggest collection of three headed taxidermy animals, Michael does absolutely nothing.

Trevor just about screams. “But hell, I’ll figure it out!”

“Giving yourself ten points for every innocent pedestrian you mow down is not finding a destination.”

“ _Michael_.”

And god, if Michael can’t feel those eyes burning on his neck as he refuses to turn. It’s black magic. It’s utterly, and so extremely fucked up that all Trevor has to do to win his case is throw out a word. Not a word, a name. A name that Michael has never even been particularly fond of. It’s unfair. It’s unrealistic. It works. Michael is parked illegally on the shoulder of the road within seconds.

“Trevor.” He replies.

Here they switch sides, and settle into the heat that they’ve left for each other. It’s a new world, over here. On the side of the car that Trevor has made his own. His ratty old hat is wedged between the seat. And there’s his little Polaroid, dog eared and sticking out from the glove-box. Michael still can’t see what it is. It even sort of smells like him, over here. Pines, and dirt, and wetness and mystery.

“You wanna’ know something? I never know where the fuck I’m going either.” Trevor admits quietly, as focus drips into him. “But I _do,_ at the same time _._..D’you get what I’m saying?”

Michael doesn’t. And at the same time, he knows the feeling very well.

Trevor grips the wheel with one hand, unafraid of anything in the world. One foot up on the seat, left knee pressed carelessly against his chest. This is why they usually keep to their respective roles. But Michael catches himself staring at this train wreck beside him. And in that, he thinks that this is probably why John said what he said.

And they’re off to the races. Neverland, and wherever the fuck else Trevor decides to hurl them into. The worst part is that Michael doesn’t mind it too much.

They take every turn, and follow every winding residential road. All the while, Trevor is a man on a mission. He peers into each window like the people inside are hiding something from him alone. Michael wonders if it’s envy. Even if he just kind of looks like the poster man for stranger danger. He’s sure it’s just Trevor’s mind working out the best way to slip inside and make away with the valuables. But each picket fence is as white as the earth below them. Michael can’t say he would mind maintaining a homestead like that.

And then the picket fences are gone, and they’re onto the next clump of nonsense. Back on the road, this time.

“Not the quite the spontaneous lifestyle you were looking for, eh?” Michael prods.

“You never know until you know.” Trevor excuses himself. Michael rejects Trevor’s pseudo-transient bullshit with a roll of the eyes. It’s the kind of stuff you get tired of, after this long. It’s too small to confront. But just big enough to tease.

“Righteous, kemosabe.” He picks up a thick, and slightly offensive Californian accent. “What should we do next? Burn our clothes and run around naked praising the sun gods, or some shit?”

Trevor tenses. You can see it in the way his shoulders rise, and the muscles on his neck tighten. Michael watches his mind unfold. He chews at his lip, and tells himself that  _Jesus Christ, he’s really got to stop that habit_. Trevor cracks his neck. Michael’s lips curl up in curiosity. He doesn’t look away. He tells himself something else. Tells himself t _hat Shit, he’s really gotta’ kick this one too._

“So. Spontaneous. That’s what you’re looking for.”

Michael acknowledges Trevor’s assumption with a simple nod.

“If you can dish it, I can take it.”

And can he? God knows. Because in honesty, the statement that Michael just gave was a terribly dangerous one. Trevor can dish out murder. Trevor can dish out sodomy, and mind games, and probably a lethal weapon or two. Michael waits to see what it is that Trevor can deliver.

Trevor meets his stare, and Michael has absolutely no idea what it is that he’s just asked for. Trevor showcases a thin smile. It spreads upward. Eviler, and eviler. He’s starts to laugh. He’s still looking at Michael when their speed hits eighty.

It doesn’t stop, and Michael doesn’t ask it too. It’s a challenge. He’s grinning into the empty road, begging Michael with his dangerous decision to admit that he’s better at this. It’s their game. It’s all their game. Every podunk town, every measly neighborhood they grace with their presences is a pawn in their own fucking game. Trevor plays it with speed. Michael plays it by holding on, and remembering that these will be the best years of his life.

He cranks the window down with the knob on the side of his door. They hit ninety. He sticks his hand out ever so carefully, and lets his fingers dance in the rush of the wind. Ninety five. He whoops, and cheers. Ninety nine.

The snow reminds them that they’re human, and causes them to skid for about ten or twenty feet. In the seconds it takes Trevor to correct the car into a patch of safety on the side of the road, Michael is accepting death. There’s a firm scolding in his throat, when they stop. Threats, and screams, and reasons as to why that was a stupid thing to do. They’re stuck. He lets them be stuck.

“That’s-...” Trevor swallows to avoid panting. “Mikey, _fuck_. _That’s_ how you decide where you’re going.”

Michael can’t answer for a series of seconds that knit together into an eternity. He never fully catches his breath.

“And did you decide on that? On where you’re going?”

“Yeah.” He loses his focus in space, and stares out into the world that they’ve defeated once again. “Nowhere. Open the glove box. Gimme what you find.”

Michael keeps up the whole not-asking-questions thing, partly because it’s getting to be tiring. Another part of it, is that Trevor is doing this weird thing. He’s being so weirdly fascinating that Michael finds himself doing exactly as he’s told. The Polaroid flutters to the ground as he cracks the glove box open.

“Alright.” Michael chuckles softly, and pulls the contents out with his chilled hands. “Okay. So you’ve got weed. Not that spontaneous, and I dunno’ where you got it, but I’ll succumb.”

“Not our car, Mike. Sometimes you find cash. Sometimes you find body parts. Sometimes you find weed.” He signals for Michael to fork it over, and takes it himself when he isn’t quick enough. He opens a nearly empty baggy, and sniffs at the contents. He cradles the pipe in his hands, and nods his head.

“It’s spontaneous enough. So shut up. Breathe. This is what we’re doing. I get greens.”

At that, Trevor picks a small bud into pieces, and stuffs it into the bowl. He steals the privellege of being the first one to light it up, and take in the dirty waft of smoke that he’s still young enough, and naive enough to get a kick out of. Michael, too. He takes the next hit as Trevor relaxes into his mojo.

Trevor spares any noise, and Michael appreciates it. The lighter flickers, he breathes, and there it is. That old teenage bliss that nobody has the time, or the money for anymore. He sneaks another peek over at Trevor, because it’s a fucking disease at this point. He’s playing with his pocket knife. Waiting.

“It’s been awhile, hasn’t it?.” Michael comments as if Trevor doesn’t know. Trevor lets him know just how unhelpful that comment was, holding up his index finger in place of a _shhh_. He’s been doing that a lot lately. Michael passes the tools, and Trevor takes the next hit.

It happens like this for a while. Silently passing, firing, and reloading until their brains are a comfortable mush, and Michael can feel his fingernails tingling. It’s quiet. Uncomfortably quiet. Trevor’s still fiddling with that tiny clown knife, scraping the dirt out from underneath his fingernails. It’s so cold that they don’t notice it.

“Hey.” Michael begins, quietly at first. It doesn’t take much to escalate to loud. “Hey! Man, listen, I’m-”

“Fuck.” Trevor hisses under his breath. Michael doesn’t know why until he looks down, and catches a look at the steady trickle of red seeping out from under Trevor’s finger. His shushing finger. Serves him right.

“Serves you right.” Michael gives voice to his thoughts. “Listen, maybe we should get going pretty soon-”

Michael quiets at the command of the finger on his lips. It’s Trevor’s. And with it, he’s brought blood. He leaves it there, for these few seconds where nobody quite knows what’s going to happen next. They’re watching each other. Looking for abnormalities, in these familiar faces. And they spot a few. Only they don’t know what they are.

“Shh.” Then his finger is gone. It leaves behind a spot of red, a tattoo on Michael’s upper lip. A reminder that it’s quiet time. Michael’s quiet time. Trevor’s turn to talk.

“Do you wanna’ talk, Michael?” He whispers. No intent of letting Michael actually do that. “You wanna’ talk about something, don’t you?”

Michael only wears confusion. He’s as still as he is silent. He touches at his lips.

They both follow Trevor’s rule. No words, no sounds. Just the haze, and a mexican standoff that refuses to end until Trevor turns around. At first, Michael thinks he’s going to leave. But the door doesn’t open. Rather, Michael begins to feel a pressure creeping into his laps. A warmth. It takes a moment for him to know what it is.

It’s Trevor’s head.

He’s sprawled out across the center console, casting aside the typical roles of friendship. He’s comfortable, and he’s warm. It’s good here. Even if Michael is stiff, and close to pushing the disturbance from his legs. Because he doesn’t do that. Maybe it’s because he’s high. So high off the ground, and up in his own head that everything is good, and nothing will be weird in a few intentions, and everyone’s intentions are sweet as pie.

Then again, maybe it’s just like that. Maybe things are good, sometimes.

“D’you wanna’ know why I wear dresses?”

The quiet is an acceptable response. And it gives Trevor a chance to wonder that himself, for a moment.

“Because I like them.”

Miles from here, John the fairy godmother must be shaking his head and smiling at just how right he was. Michael doesn’t look for another answer. He doesn’t really stop to think that he needs another one. This conversation was one he'd only ever had in his head. And it never went this well, either. Trevor starts to sort of laugh. It’s slow. Quiet, and dazed.

“Because I just-...I fucking _like_ them.” Trevor chuckles at a joke that nobody told. “There you go. Have fun with that. There’s your red shoe. I’m fucked up. I’m sorry if that’s difficult for you to process, or whatever.

“Yeah.” Michael breaks his oath of silence, and Trevor doesn’t even seem to mind. His hand finds Trevor’s head, and offers it a comforting pat. He doesn’t move it away, like he’s supposed to. It stays there. It’s comfortable there.

“You really are. Not because of the dresses, mind you,  but you’re a pretty fucked up fuck.”

Trevor leaves a beat of silence. “Come again?”

“You’re fucked up. You’re a piece of shit, and a few dozen other things. We’ve been over that.” Trevor delivers a fist to the closest part of Michael that he can reach, and Michael knows that his reign of teasing is being summoned to end.

“Oh, the other thing? You’re a dick, but that’s because you piss on people’s cars and threaten people’s lives for giving you the wrong kind of toast. Wearing a dress, or some frilly stockings doesn’t make you a piece of shit. On the scale of things you do, I’d say it’s relatively normal.”

“Shut your shit mouth.”

“I’m serious.” Michael’s thumb sort of twitches across Trevor’s forehead. Half asleep, that could be passed off as gentle stroking. As luck should have it, Trevor is almost half asleep. Michael does it again. Neither of them know whether or not it’s intentional.

“Good thing I don’t care whether you like it or not.” Trevor lies. And in this tired, and hazy sort of hive mind, both of them can tell that that isn’t true.

Michael gives a tired couple of exhales that he tries to pass off as a laugh.

“I like you, man.”

Trevor harrumphs knowingly. “Yeah, I know.”

“Yeah? How?”

It’s almost supposed to be a joke. Just Michael, throwing out some sort of sleepy sarcasm that Trevor is supposed to curse at, and forget for the rest of the night. Trevor never really does anything that he’s supposed to anyways.

“I dunno’. Because you’re here.”

And Michael hadn’t rewarded himself for that, ever. He’d never been told he was a good guy just for being somewhere. These past few years were task, sure, but they had never really seemed like one. Trevor wasn’t a chore. He was just a part of the machinery. He sort of had to be there in the same way that Michael did. It’s just how it works.

“Do you like me?” Michael asks, and figures that he might as well cast the rest of his dignity outside the open window while the theme is still running. But Trevor’s answer is almost too quick.

“The fuck do you think?”

“Yes?” Michael asks.

“ _Yes._ ” Trevor smacks the seat in sudden passion. “I fuckin’..Listen, I fucking love you, you stupid douche. Don’t you know that? Is your head _that_ far up your own vagina that you don’t know that?”

Michael clicks his tongue like he’s pondering this deeply. “Well, you know. Call me crazy, but you saying shit like that definitely tends to convince me otherwise.”

Trevor laughs again. Not cruelly, this time. Warmly. It’s good to hear. And when he hears it, that black magic strikes again. Because Michael isn’t mad anymore. Not even offended. That’s what scares him.

“Guess the cat’s outta’ the bag, then.” Trevor settles his head in a little further, and Michael the human-fucking-pillow just sits there and lets it happen. “You’re right. I hate you.”

“Good.” The wind creeps in through the open window behind Michael’s neck, and runs down through his sweater, and into his body. He’s cold, then. Freezing even, as the smell of snow and dirt stains his brain like a fine wine. The cold isn’t the source of his shivers.

“Cause’ I'm pretty sure I hate you more.”

High on that peace n’ quiet kick, and some other things, Trevor doesn’t argue with it. Michael assumes that he’s sleeping. The rise and fall of his chest is just steady enough to suggest it. It’s alright, though. It gives Michael a chance to sit in his think tank, for a bit. Figure some stuff out.

And yet, he figures nothing out. It’s the same problem, striking again for what won’t be the last time today. He’s watching again. He’s developed a dirty, dirty habit today. And the habit is asleep on his lap. Peaceful in sleep, like he’s never caused a bit of trouble in his life. Like he isn’t causing a war in Michael at this very moment.

That little fucker. Like he has the right to do this. The worst part is that he’s oblivious. The guy has never been oblivious about a thing in his life, and yet he has no idea, not an absolute fucking clue about the internal conflict that he’s caused. He’s just asleep. Just lying there, destroying things that he has no idea he’s destroying. Leaving Michael with absolutely no choices left.

No. Leaving Michael with one choice. With one crazy little option that he’s been dreading since it popped into his mind. He’s still dreading it. Yet, he wakes the sleeping beast on his legs.

“Mm?” Trevor mumbles, not yet angry at the hand gently shaking his shoulders back to life. “Where’s...What?”

“Get up. Hey, c’mon, get the hell up.”

Trevor bristles in exhaustion. “Jesus Christ, what now?”

“We have to go.” Michael hisses quietly. Like they’re on a time limit. Like this has to happen right now. Like he has to fix this right the hell now. “We have to go back.”

Trevor’s usual responses are delayed, to due the fact that his brain is currently the consistency of baby food. So all that he manages is a simple, and barely audible _why?_ as he rubs irritably at his eyes, and still doesn’t move.

“I left something behind.” Michael tries his best to make his lies believable, and delivers them sloppily and quickly in the process. “I have to-...Shit, does it matter? Get up, come on! Get up, move it, let’s make fucking tracks!”

He isn't even completely sure that this is the right thing to do. Like most realizations come, this one has come quick. But slower than it should have. Michael doesn't even take a chance to stop, and ask himself for a moment whether or not he's even serious about this. Pot does things. Passion does things. A weird, dysfunctional two-year relationship that's just now decided to fizzle over the edge, does things. The only thing is, none of that convinces him otherwise. It kind of only works further towards convincing him that he's right. 

They switch seats relatively easy. Only because Trevor is too disoriented to prod for a further explanation, and Michael is oddly the one with the higher smoking tolerance. So it was a good part of the plan, them getting high like that. Not that it was originally part of the plan. Not that this was the plan until about three minutes ago.

But it works, because Trevor is gone from this world by the time they’ve turned around. He’s a quiet sleeper, and Michael almost finds it odd. He always has been. The only sound, as usual, is still the wind, and the trees, and the birds. He doesn’t take the time to notice it. There isn’t time to notice it.

If nothing else, these past few minutes have given him something that he hadn’t at first set out to find today. And Trevor would be proud to see that. Trevor would be proud to know that in under five minutes, Michael has found his destination.

Because over a few different meadows, and a slump of hills, and a million other needless places, there is a town waiting. There is an opportunity to be taken. There is a truth to be said. Michael needs to tell that truth.

Michael needs to tell someone that they were very, very right.


	5. Chapter 5

All things pull to a close.This is written within the walls that keep Michael’s head together. He runs it through his mind, when things start to feel permanent. He remembers it at the gates to every new town and city, and he remembers it as the road turns to dust behind him in the very end. He comes and goes as he pleases. He takes what he wants. And he never returns.

Not until he does.

He’s clenching the steering wheel with such heat, and force that it could melt underneath his palms. He’s nervous, and it’s visible. It’s palpable, and it’s audible, and shit, you could probably smell it if you really wanted to. He’s nervous because today is a day of breaking habits. Michael waits for the washy welcome sign roll back over the hills, and into his field of vision. He’s sick to his stomach.

“Mike?” 

Michael had always been a good liar. Coincidentally, Trevor’s talent was sniffing out those lies and turning them into confessions. So Trevor’s voice peeps up beyond the sound of nothing. It’s tired, and gruff, and innocent, as if those three words have any business standing next to each other. But when he speaks up, Michael has no words to give back.

“Michael.” His question ceases to be a question. “Wha’s this about.” 

And Michael, who still hasn’t molded a perfect answer for that question to any degree, swaps the subject quite immediately. He clears his throat. Relaxes his hands a bit.

“When’s the last time you had yourself a decent night’s sleep?”

“Your mother.” Trevor hisses, not even bothering to open his eyes. This is the only answer that Michael really requires to draw his conclusion.

“Thought so.” Michael lets the start of a smile blemish his still face, and tries his best not to let Trevor distract him. He’s curling down back down into safety, his head pressed up against the cool window. Trying so hard to keep his eyes peeled. Like he doesn’t want so badly to go back to sleep. 

“Sleep. I know what I’m doing.” Michael tells him. “Scout’s honor.”

And a scout’s honor is something that Trevor can let himself fall asleep on. It’s something that Michael can let himself believe. It isn’t a promise. A promise is too thick, too permanent. Maybe he doesn’t know what he’s doing. In truth, he hardly ever does. But maybe he’s close.

As they pass the last few country stores and hitching posts that live beyond Seneca Hill, Michael remembers that he is perhaps about to make the biggest change of all. He returns. 

Nobody knows that it’s a big deal. Nobody looks at their car in particular, as special. Nobody knows how dangerous this is. Not even Trevor, who’s so deep into his own subconscious that he almost looks harmless. Michael looks away from it all, and loses himself in focus. There is one thing left to do here. There is one thing left that matters.

“You stay here.” 

It’s seconds before they’ve even hit the parking lot, that Michael is telling this to Trevor’s wakeless body. It’s a blessing that he hasn’t stirred yet. None of this is very easy to explain. Explaining to him why they’d had to leave town so quickly had been hard enough. Now, explaining why it was so important that they come back...

He doesn’t really want to do that. Not just yet. In time.

“Mmm, roger.” Trevor peeps up from his death-like trance, almost sort of giving Michael the okay to slip off for a moment. Roger that, he means. Either that, or he’s having a very intoxicating dream about some unlucky fellow named Roger. While Michael doesn’t doubt it, he doesn’t much care to stick around and find out. He’s back out into the chill before Trevor has the chance to elaborate. 

When he’s back into the pink lights and lonely sounds, he’s immediately surprised by the fact that it still smells the same here. And by the fact that he still has the smell memorized at all. It’s only been a few hours since he’s been here. But there’s that stench. It’s rock candy, and body odor, and the ever pungent scent of perfume that just isn’t expensive enough. God, he knows it well. He’s known it many times, in these past days. Every time he smells it, he’s doing something stupid. It’s stronger now than ever before.

The only woman here who isn’t shaking her goodies for a chance at something better, is ironically, the most exhausted looking of the bunch. She’s running the bar, and by the look of the bags under her eyes, dying slowly. And she’s the only one here who’s standing still enough to have maybe seen where John is.

“You seen John?” Michael raises his voice above the colorful music, and wastes no time in pulling up a chair.

“Boy, have I.” Her voice is either naturally venomous, or swelling with sarcasm. Hard to tell. Michael knows someone else like that. He thinks of asking her to clarify. She doesn’t let him, and picks up right where she was.

“Why, have you? You don’t look like you’re here for the kind of cookies that he’s serving up. If you don’t mind my saying.”

There’s business to tend to. But as he always does, Michael finds a way to be offended. For a small few seconds, he forgets why he’s here. His eyebrows are knitting into dangerous slopes, and his mission is replaced with a spark of argumentativeness. 

“Yeah? Then what  _ do _ I look like, by your standards? Humor me.”

“Like the usual straight, white meat head.” She admits. But she seems to think on it for a moment, and her certainty flickers. “But you  _ are  _ looking for John. Presumably not to confirm your masculinity by driving a screwdriver into his stomach and calling him a faggot. So maybe you’re a  _ confused _ , white meat head.”

There’s an image into his mind that slides in relatively quick, after that accusation. It’s a picture in his head. It’s the sleepy body in his car, chest rising at a healthy pace to no beat in particular. He’s washed in a car-full  of wasting sunlight, tossing around every now and again. Nobody can see the blood under his fingernails. He’s peaceful. He’s okay, like that.   
  


Michael comes to. He almost winces. She knows she’s hit a nerve, and at that, she’s won her game. She looks happier than she’s probably been all day, and Michael wonders if picking apart people’s private insecurities  is a habit of hers.

“I got this feeling that you want this conversation to end just as badly as I do.” He concludes, as a very suspicious sweatiness is introduced to his palms. “So how about it, sweets? You think we could see about making that happen?”

“I’d like nothing better.” Her smile is as sweet as it is rotten. “He just left. Catch him if you can, sweets.”

Of course he isn’t just sitting there so reach-ably, feet kicked up in his sad excuse for an office. Of course this has to be just a little bit more convoluted than it already was. Wherever there is complication, Michael will find it. Willingly or not. He gives her a nod, and parts from the building for what still isn’t the last time.

Trevor’s still baking evenly in the sunlight, from what Michael catches as he passes the car. He doesn’t stay long enough to check up on him. But the idea isn’t too far from his mind, either. He’s satisfied with a small pause that he doesn’t have time for, and a glance to match.  That short few seconds, and that man behind the windshield are all it really takes for him to know that he’s doing the right thing. Stupid, but right.

As it pans out, John’s car is the only one in the parking lot with a convertible roof. Figures. Michael takes it slow, and easy. Keeps his hands out of his pockets, like the average every-man with an unusually large favor on his mind. John hasn’t left yet. He only catches a glimpse of Michael through the rear view mirror. For one reason or another, he doesn’t choose to back up over him.

John turns his head, donning a new pair of glasses in place of the other ones. Sunglasses.

“I don’t suppose...” He pauses, and Michael isn’t convinced that the pause isn’t solely for dramatic effect. “That I can help you with anything?”

Michael sniffs at the cold.

“I suppose you can.”

“And we’ve been over the fact that I can’t.” John sets his car into park, and Michael starts to think that maybe that’s a good sign. If nothing else, there’s chance that a conversation is about to take place. “Let’s not be broken records, sugar.”

“It’s different now.” His words come out clunky, and forced. But they sound no less true than they really are. As John turns around in his tackily upholstered seat, it becomes evident that Michael has struck a curious chord in him.

“Different how?”

Michael swallows hard. His mouth goes dry.

“You were right, I guess.”

“You _ guess _ ?”

Michael breathes, and he cracks his neck, and he searches desperately for focus in anything but the character of a man in front of him. 

“Yeah, I fucking _ guess _ . You want more than that? You want a formal essay of my confessions, or is a paragraph fine?”

“I don’t want  _ shit _ , Mike.” That perfectly manicured hand lingers dangerously on the gear-stick, reminding Michael that nothing is keeping John here but a parking brake that can so easily be released.

“ _ You _ want something. And that something is a very greedy, difficult favor from  _ me _ . Remember that.”

“Okay, then I’m sorry.” It’s an insincere, and cheaply delivered apology. But it’s the desperation in Michael’s voice, that keeps John where he is. “I’m out of line, I get that. This is a really fucking out of line thing to ask for. But i’m asking for it. So there.”

There’s something so mysteriously terrifying about a pause like the one that follows. Michael has only ever known two things that come after pauses like that. Unintelligible swearing, or a new topic. Usually an uncomfortable one. John relaxes the guard he’s put up, and lets his shoulders sink as a tired sort of sigh escapes him. The kind of sigh that wants this conversation to be over.

“Where were we?” He asks, only to satisfy his own burning question. “You were telling me that I was right? As if I wasn’t already aware?”

A cold nod is all that Michael can spare.

“So you’re in love?”   


And Michael, in his brilliant and all-knowing glory, can’t in all honesty turn up a straight answer for that. No pun intended. John didn’t rightly expect one, anyway. Nothing that turns up in this parking lot for the Sunday show is completely straight about anything.

“You don’t have to say it like that, alright?” Michael’s defensiveness flares up. “If you can’t kick something off of you for two or three years, you start getting a soft spot for it. It doesn’t have to be all gooey and shit, it just fucking happens, and nobody can-”

“Sugar.” 

Michael holds his secrets for a moment more, and considers dropping this whole ordeal for the second time. Then he feels the sun on the back of his neck. The rare warmth, gracing him for as long as it takes to make him realize that he feels good. Sometimes feeling good is all it takes.

“Alright.” He breathes, and he breathes easy. “Alright, so I’m in love with that stupid asshole.”

John feels the sun, too. And the easy feeling that comes with it. So he offers up a piece of advice. One that he might not have cared enough to part with, otherwise.

“Love is unconditional, you tasteless fuckwit!” He spits, somehow dreamily. “You don’t tell someone you love them by sticking them in a drag show to force them to confront their inner demons. You tell them by telling them!”

Michael would like to argue with that. The problem is, there isn’t really an argument to counter that with. Because he sort of, almost agrees with it.

So he nods his head.

The exasperated nod that John gives off, is a clue that he’s helped more than one person come to this realization. Also a clue that they don’t pay him enough to deal with this shit.”

“Good. Good boy.” He mutters in boredom, no more proud than a random stranger might be. “Now scoot out, I’ve got dinner reservations, and believe me, the real Mickey waits for no man.”

But Michael doesn’t think this is quite over yet. The conversation was cutesy enough, and more helpful than he’d originally planned on, but he isn’t really a walk-away-unsatisfied kind of guy. There’s still something he wants, here. And though there are parts of his dry heart that have gone doughy, the fact doesn’t change. Michael is a thief.

“So my turkey’s pretty much cooked, then?” Michael asks, hands finding solace in his deep coat pockets. “You’re not gonna’ let me stick my emotionally deranged love interest in a drag show to force him to conquer his inner demons? That’s it?”

“You hadn’t mentioned the _‘emotionally deranged’_ part before.” John turns the key. “Funny that you think that makes a difference, though. C'est la vie,asshole.”

Michael’s got his pistol out before his french dictionary.

It’s Canadian-made. Trevor’s, probably. It’s the kind of cute little gun that almost looks fashionable, when resting next to a cup of fresh espresso on your kitchen table in the morning. But out here, it’s not an accessory. Out here, it’s a passport to another grave. He raises it into the air like he’s used to. Straight, and steady, and finding a target in whatever he needs to. In this case, John.

It doesn’t even have to be loaded. Because like every smart, all-american citizen, John is assuming it is. His face is colorless, and his hands are reaching to the heavens like he’s begging for entrance if the next five minutes don’t go as planned.

“I didn’t peg you for a psychopath.” He sputters. Michael only scoffs.

“Nobody ever pegs anybody for psychopathic until there’s a gun in the air.” He laughs a little bit, and he knows how crazy he looks doing it. But he knows better. 

“Me? Nah, I’m not crazy. Really fucking tired of this shit, sure. But I’m not violent to hurt people, bud. I’m violent to get what I want.”

“Th-That’s a little unorthodox.” 

“Unorthodox, sure.” He nods, admiring the way the sunlight flickers against the slide of his very much ready-to-go pistol. “But unsuccessful? Whoo, boy. Take a second guess.”

The success is already starting to happen. Michael can see it, tempting him in the way those little beads of sweat are sparkling against John’s forehead. He can feel it, in the rush of adrenaline that he swears to god he can almost taste. And he hears it. He hears it in that one final, shaky sigh that John lets him have.

“You know I’m gonna’ call the police, right?” His lip is quivering, but the curiosity in his eyes still hasn’t managed to fade. “Right after that final curtain. Right when he’s taking his final bows. You won’t even be there to see it, if you’re already pining for him in the back of a squad-car.”

“I’ve done worse in the back of a squad-car.” Michael doesn’t lay down his arm. This deal hasn’t been sealed yet. “So how about it? We have a deal, Trish?”

Michael stares him down long enough to let him know that the deal is made first. Then, the gun goes down. And he doesn’t operate these things any other way. The stalemate goes on for another few seconds before John opens his mouth.

“I knew there was something off about you.”

This isn’t news to Michael. There’s something off about every last asshole on this garbage depository of a planet. His quirk is just a little less easy to hide. A little more useful than a dirty habit, or a nasty fetish.

When Michael doesn’t say anything else, John fills the silence out of fear that a gunshot will do the job instead of him.

“I could call the police the minute you leave.” He tells a truth that Michael doesn’t doubt for a second. “And you have no reason to believe that I won’t.”

Michael shrugs, and there’s nearly something innocent about it.

“You could, yeah. But I think you like me. Maybe you feel for me more than you’d like me to think.” He smirks knowingly. “Maybe you’re more afraid of me than you’d like me to think.”

“One of those is true.” John doesn’t go into which one. And if he’s being honest, Michael can’t really tell which one. It doesn’t matter. Both of those reasons accomplish the same thing. Because there’s the start of a grin there, painted onto John’s stony face. It’s only there if you squint. Only there if you’re crazy enough to believe that a man with a gun in his face could possibly be a little bit interested in this scheme.

“I must be some kind of fucking idiot. Have him here Sunday morning.” With that, Michael is in. “At least eight hours before the show starts. I don’t take my girls untrained. Not even the ones I have forced onto me at gunpoint.”

Michael finds that his fingers are shaking. He doesn’t even know if his piece is loaded.But he keeps it up as he backs away, because he’s been trained to believe that things go sour quickly. Things will always go shitty when they’re the brightest.

“I’ll do that.” At that, he’s supposed to be gone. Make the deal, and slip out alive if you’re lucky enough, that’s always been the plan. He almost regrets sticking the gun back into his pocket when John calls him back for a second.

“Michael.” He calls, getting his name right for what might be for the first time, and will probably be the last. “Stop by here, sometime Saturday. I’ll be here the whole day. I think I might have something to, uh...Assist your cause.”

“I’ll think about it.”

And he’s off, knowing fully well that he’ll be there Saturday. The daytime is hardly breathing anymore, by the time he looks back into the sky. It’s that time of the year when the nights are longer, and the daytime can be missed in a single blink. The cold is bearable. The air is sweet.

John parts until Saturday, with one last thing to say.

“I hope he’s worth it, Michael.” And only time can answer that. A little less than a week, to be exact.

It’s a little less than a week later, that Trevor realizes how dangerously close he is too losing his shit here. Here, would be the same hotel room from before. It’s the same hotel room from before because they weren’t gone from it long enough for it to be rented out to anyone else. It smells the same. It looks the same, and it feels the same because they’ve done close to absolutely _nothing_ since they returned here for absolutely _no_ reason.

Any violence since they’ve been here? No.Thievery? Not unless you count jipping the vending machine out of a ninety-nine cent bag of potato chips. 

And a man can only pick so many fights with the same set of rowdy locals. So he’s taken up new hobbies. Such as showering regularly, and torturing the roaches that climb up through the tub drain with hot sewing needles. 

Would staying here be so bad? Not if he was actually allowed to leave to do something other than feed pigeons, or go for leisurely strolls, or whatever the fuck it is that Michael is up to. And if Michael would actually tell him what it is that he’s up to? Then maybe he wouldn’t be making the irrational decision that he is, on this fine Sunday morning.

Michael, on the opposite spectrum, is making a different irrational decision at this very moment. And here he is, waltzing through the front door with that stupid look on his face, as if today is just like every other day that they’ve suffered through.

“What’s all this?” Michael gestures confusedly at the assortment of possessions on the bedspread, which just so happen to be Trevor’s irrational decision. Trevor’s irrational decision of packing, and getting them the hell out of here. An Idea that had once belonged to Michael.

“You tell me.” 

Trevor looks somehow unhealthier, as he swings the last piece of baggage up and onto the bed. His hair is clean, and so is the bulk of his clothing. His face is as cleanly shaven as it’ll probably ever be. The fact that he’s had the -time- to take care of himself. That’s what seems off, and unhealthy.

‘it _looks_ like you’re heading for the fucking hills.” Michael guesses, and Trevor curses at him for forgetting to shut the front door. He closes it behind him, shutting out the morning wind which has just now decided to be louder than hell.

“Bingo, baby.” The last suitcase zips closed, and Trevor pats it to signal the end of this whole ordeal. “Except for you forgot the ‘we’ part. _We’re_ heading for the fucking hills. Surprise.”

Michael snorts a little bit. Surprise. Trevor doesn’t even know the -definition- of the word surprise yet. But this ‘surprise, we’re skipping town again’ thing, is something Michael hadn’t counted on. For a clueless moment, he stands there. Unsure of the next move to play.

“Can’t argue with that, can I?” Stripped of ideas, Michael scratches at the spot behind his ear. Trevor gives a dull shake of the head, now resting his elbow on the headboard as he watches Michael try and figure this out.

“Wouldn’t be wise to, no.”

“Mhm” Michael hums tiredly, playing the exhaustion card as he sits beside the luggage to strip his winter clothing. “Don’t really feel like driving a bunch, tonight. Kinda’ tired. First thing in the morning.”

Michael casts his shoes and socks aside. Trevor, in a drastic change of character, picks them up and pushes them back into Michael’s lap. He’s wearing a look as stern as Michael has ever seen. 

“I’ll drive.”

Michael bites right back, adopting an expression to match.

“Not. Tonight.”

In Trevor’s dictionary, even words said so much as mildly aggressively are fighting words. This is enough to send his hands into the air. That deep, throaty groan makes it’s way back out of his chest. He’s not pissed yet. But he’s sure as hell on his way.

“D’you got the shits, or something?” Trevor asks. To Michael’s surprise, that was an honest question. “That’s it, right? You’ve got that look on your face.”

“No. God, no, it’s just-”

“Because we can do something about that.” Trevor assures him, raising his voice to that dramatic level that he likes so much. He’s sort of pacing, now. “Just, y’know. Boil some salt water, take a fucking antacid, whatever the fuck it is that you do about that. But If you think that just because-”

“I don’t have the fucking shits, dude!” If the yelling isn’t enough, Michael throws his shoes to the floor once more. “Irritable bowels aren’t the root of every goddamned issue I have.”

It takes a second of quiet for Trevor to catch up. But then he’s glowering his eyes. Giving a look that Michael is smart enough to identify as dangerous.

“You’re damn right.” He hisses. “If that were the case, I’d have suspected that you’d been having the shits the whole week.”

Michael doesn’t choose to humor that with a response. Until it’s a few seconds later, and he does.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

The next move that Trevor plays, is one of his favorites. Uncomfortable closeness. He balls his fists, and leans down to meet Michael’s eyes. Their noses are lined up. Neither one aware that the other one isn’t made uncomfortable by this at all.

“Why are we here, Michael?”

Come to think of it, Michael never really ended up thinking of a backstory for this. It was always ‘I need to do something here’ or ‘I forgot something there’. Trevor has never been given a straight response, and though he hardly ever did anything straight either, neither of them can really be blamed that it had come to this.

“Y’know, like a week and a half ago you liked it here.”

“I don’t like anything.” He snaps back. Michael can smell the cigarettes on his breath, from this distance. “Way to fucking change the subject.”

“You _liked_ it here, Trevor.” Michael teases him with that little bit of information. “And now, you just _magically_ feel like you wanna’ tear the fuck out of here for a reason that you’re not even open about. _I_ should be asking the questions.”

“That’s so like you. That’s so fucking _like_ you.”Trevor moves away for a second. Only to retrieve Michael’s shoes, and like clockwork, force them back into his lap. 

“ _Michael’s_ the only one who gets to have secrets, and _Michael’s_ the only one who gets to know everything about everything. Mr. Big fucking boss-man, here. Everyone give up your shit now before Michael finds out about it, but god forbid he tell anyone else what he’s got going on in his life.”

Michael does nothing about the shoes he’s been forced to take again. In fact, he does nothing about anything for a few moments. 

“I don’t _have_ any secrets.”

“Like _shit_ you don’t, cocksucker.”

“Alright. Okay.” And then, everything is red. Michael’s putting his shoes on, and he’s instantly regretting doing anything nice at all for this big entitled prick. “What d’you want? You want me to put on my shoes, and skip merrily on out of here on your command? Tell you everything I’ve never told you because you want me to _right now_?”

Trevor, much to Michael’s dismay, looks like he’s hit the fucking Powerball.

“ _Yes_! Yes, that’s what I fucking want!” He throws down his hands, and they come down noisily on his legs. “And you’re too high on that fucking horse of yours to realize that _none_ of what you just mentioned is that big of a deal.”

Michael is standing up without realizing that he ever stood. It’s funny how rage does that. And it’s funny how quickly rage has a way of melting into something else.

“And what about what I want, huh?” His voice is a whisper that somehow manages to be as angry as it was when it was loud. The distance is closed again, and they’re in each other’s faces again. Rabid dogs, waiting for the right moment to attack.

“When does it stop being about what _you_ want, Michael?”

Michael’s snarl doesn’t falter.

“Right after you ask me what it is that I want.”

Curiosity is never too far behind anger. Trevor cocks his head. The veins on his neck are popping out. Little purple rivers, threatening Michael’s life the longer he stares at them. And there goes his heart. Ever so slowly, pumping out rhythms that he swears the whole world can hear.

Trevor breathes. Their noses brush, and their breathing is shared.

“What the fuck _do_ you want, Michael?”

They both know before Michael has the chance to answer. And they both know that he isn’t brave enough yet to tell the truth. Or the whole truth, anyway. But these few seconds are almost nice. They let the seconds go on, warm and tense and long awaited.

Michael is the first to break it.

“I want you to come with me.”

The car ride is, to say the least, tense.  Michael isn’t sure that he’d be able to handle it, if it weren’t for the fact that The Peach Pit is only about three minutes away. Thank god for the fact that traffic exists everywhere but inside the limits of Seneca Hill. Thank god for the fact that Michael won’t be seeing Trevor for most of the rest of the day. Thank god for Michael’s keen ability to hide his sexual arousal.

He’s twitching. Mostly in parts that he’d rather he not be twitching. There’s just something about wanting to sneak under your best friend’s clothing and ravage whatever you find, that sort of makes it hard to drive. 

Trevor’s mindset isn’t too much different. Nobody fidgets that much in their seat otherwise. And the deal with Trevor, is that he doesn’t fight stuff like that off. Not for long, anyhow. Michael figures that he’s got about four minutes until this all blows up in their faces. 

And the worst part is that acting on these frustrations isn’t in the cards. Not today.

“Okay. Uh.” They hit the old used up parking lot one last time, and this is all that Michael has to say. To be fair, he hadn’t anticipated that he’d be feeling like this when it came time to tell Trevor what was going on. He hadn’t anticipated the hand on his thigh, either.

“Woah, woah, hey.” He doesn’t slap it away, because he _definitely_ doesn’t mind it being there. He brushes it off. The look in Trevor’s eyes is hard to face. Hurt and anger are not a sweet combination in any sense. “Listen...I, um…”

“You got some shit on your jeans. Right there.” Trevor gestures to a stain that isn’t there. He refuses to do any more but stare nonchalantly out of the dashboard window, and expects Michael to believe that cleaning a stain was his original intention. it’s hardly believable. Not when he looks so freaked out like that.

“Trev, no. That’s not what I was trying to...Listen, man. Just look at me for a sec, okay?”

Trevor doesn’t turn to look until Michael touches his shoulder. 

“I brought you here for a reason.” Michael admits. Trevor gives a look indicating that he was expecting a different reason. Michael coughs sheepishly.

“Shit, it’s not that.”

“Oh yeah, I fucking know it’s not that.” Trevor grumbles. But he’s still sitting there, listening at well as ever. And Michael doesn’t miss the opportunity to finally begin to spill it all.

“I’m staying here tonight because I’m gonna’ watch the show.” 

He eases it out, just a little at a time. The fact that he might have just misinterpreted Trevor being Trevor as Trevor making a pass at him, is kind of making it hard to focus now. But that was a good start. And Trevor is unresponsive, at first. But he takes a moment to himself. To heal, from whatever that was. And then accepts it, with a questioning nod.

“...Okay.” He mutters.

“And _you’re_ staying here another night.”

“Mhm…” Trevor’s accepting of that is cautious. Like a detective piecing together every last bit of a suspect’s story before he comes to his final decision. 

There’s a delicate few seconds before the juiciest bit of information. 

“Because you’re gonna’ be in the show.”

His expression doesn’t flicker. Neither does the tone in his voice, or the color of his face. All of those, things that Michael had expected to change once the truth was out. Nevertheless, he’s ready for the worst.

Trevor just looks like he’s misheard something.

“What’s that?”

“it’s not-...Shit, look here.” Michael pats Trevor’s shockingly still shoulder, already backpedaling before the full story is even out. 

“So I talked to the dude who runs the show, who’s an absolute asshat by the way, and tonight’s the night he wanted to squeeze you in, and you’re gonna’ go in there this morning and get some proper training, on...Y’know. How to...drag, or whatever. Because I..thought you’d...be into it, n’ shit.”

The quiet isn’t what’s scary. It’s the fact that Trevor hasn’t changed since the conversation took this turn. If Michael didn’t know any better, have thought he’d killed him with that.

“Trev, say something.” 

He keeps eerie his peace.

“Trevor.” Michael pleads, the desperation tangible in his voice. “Come on, fucking stop that. Just say something, I can’t look at you when you’re doing that.”

And like something out of the horror films that Michael is all too familiar with, Trevor turns his head. Slowly. Slow enough for Michael to run for it while he can.

“You want me to say something?” Trevor exhausts the last of his calmness with that question. “Are you really, honestly sure that that’s what you want me to do?”

Michael nods carefully, and within seconds he’s regretting it.

“ _Fuck you! Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!_ ” He’s beating his fist into the dashboard, destroying the down payment they never made on this stolen car. “Fuck you, Michael! Fuck you, you insolent pile of used douche! Fuck you!”

“Fuck _you_ , Trevor!” Michael roars, retreating into his comfort zone as he stares out the window closes to him. “I was trying to help, dick.”

“I don’t need help, you fuck!” At first he was just yelling, there’s no doubt about that. But it’s when Michael actually listens, that he catches something else. It’s not like Trevor’s usual yelling. It’s as loud, sure. But it’s laced with something that sure smells like fear.

“I know you don’t, okay? I just thought that…” Michael does his best to calm himself. And it works just about as horribly shitty as calming yourself down always works, but it gives him a chance to collect his thoughts.

“You just... The dress thing, alright? Would you cool your jets for a second? I thought that because you’re into that...You’d... be into this, y’know?. I dunno’.”

“It’s a _hobby_.!” Trevor smacks the dashboard once more, as if Michael didn’t already know he was pissed off. “You don’t take someone who swims for the hell of it and throw them into the fucking Summer Olympics! You don’t fuckin’...I-....Shit, you-”

“Hey.” Michael warns quietly. The first one is stern, and cold. The one that follows is warm. Michael remembers the sunshine tickling the back of his neck. He wishes that Trevor could do the same. “ _Hey_. I didn’t mean for it to screw with you like this, okay?”

“You didn’t _mean_ for it. Of course you didn’t fucking mean for it. You never mean for anything.”

Michael doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean, or reference. But he doesn’t doubt that it’s true. He doesn’t doubt that Trevor believes it. 

Trevor unfolds, and Michael witnesses it. He’s biting at his fingernails, and cursing again. Ripping out his hair without knowing that he’s even doing it. Like the sun that was warming the side of his face some time ago, comes the cold. It’s a dark, muted blue this morning. The shadows cover his face like a bruise. Michael almost reaches out to touch it.

“You think you’re helping, I get that.” Trevor spits, forgiveness far from his voice. “But you’re not. This isn’t help, this is a great big can of shit that I have to fucking close now. This isn’t what I need, Michael.”

“Like you know what you need.”

“So you think _you_ know what I need?” Trevor bristles violently. And then he’s chuckling. It isn’t a good chuckle.  “God, you’re a trip that I’ll never in my life be prepared for, Michael Townley.”

Michael bristles right back. “I know better than you do.”

“Obviously not, because we’re right-fucking-here, bucko.

Michael's expecting another tantrum. And when he doesn’t throw it, Michael decided that this moment of chill-and-fume is better than Trevor finding some gasoline and going to town with it. When he looks back over, Trevor has his head in his hands. 

“I thought you’d be happy.” 

Trevor scoffs. “You thought.”

Michael rolls his eyes far enough back to interrupt his vision. And he sighs. It’s in this brief few seconds, that he realizes that he feels no better than he did before the weight was lifted from his shoulders.

“Can you just take a second to realize that someone _wanted_ you happy? Someone was thinking of you with the best intentions _at all_?” 

Trevor makes a disgusted noise that seems to say no. Michael, if it’s possible, is even more disgusted with Trevor than Trevor is with him.

“You don’t know how people work. I get it.” Michael waits for him to argue. He doesn’t. “But I’m gonna’ tell you something that I know. People who love you, throughout your life, will do really stupid things.”

Trevor mutters something that Michael can’t quite make out. He can guess it well enough, though.

“Alright, _really_ shitty things. Stupid, fucking-shitty, dumb-shit things that make no sense when you first look at them.” His logic is shaky. And he explains it as so. “But they do them...Kind of...Because they love you.”

Michael swallows his spit. Bites his tongue. 

“Because life is a giant fucking outhouse for us all to fall into, and sometimes you try to...fish the people you love _out_ of that outhouse, when really you’re just driving them deeper down into it."

“You should write poetry.”

“And sometimes-” Michael rides out the digression, and keeps on keeping on just as he was. “You just have to deal with what you're dealt. Sometimes you just have to do it.”

Trevor doesn’t have time to rebuttal, because Michael’s reaching into the backseat for something that could be a pump shotgun for all he knows. At this point, he might have preferred a pump shotgun. It’s a dusty old box, with sixties-style artwork littered about it. It’s a shoe box. Trevor is, to say the least, silenced.

“You’re doing this, Trevor.” Michael states, slipping into his angry-parent voice. “I pulled a gun to a successful drag queen’s head, and you’re fucking doing this.”

“What was that last-”

“Shut up.” Michael stops that conversation before it begins. “Open the box.”

Trevor doesn’t do it willingly. He looks down at the dusty hunk of cardboard with baited breath, and a heightened sense of fight. 

“Mike, I’m-”

“Open the box.”

And he does. There are shoes. Two of them. Candy apple red pumps, with a five inch heel. Size fourteen. They’re male shoes. Shoes designed specifically for the male foot, that Trevor feels guilty assigning a gender to.

“No _fucking_ way.” He whispers his disbelief to no one but himself. Michael catches them anyways, and nods sheepishly. A familiar tune swims about in his head. A shit-eating grin blemishes his face before he lets the music out into the real world. 

“ _Put on your red shoes and dance the-_ ”

“Michael, you are the gayest, cheesiest piece of hot garbage that I’ve ever been forced to deal with.”

Michael only just keeps smiling like he is, and watches Trevor feel the shiny plastic leather with the tips of his rough fingers.

“Least I’m _hot_ garbage.”

“Shut up.” Trevor’s tone is dull, and bored. Like he’s already so done with this stupid little chapter of life that Michael has forced upon him. But he can act any way he wants. His eyes are still stuck to those red shoes that his hands are still fondling. And he’s falling in love with them with every new second.

“You’re due in about five minutes. I wouldn’t try the fashionably-late thing, this guy is a turd like you’ve never seen.” Michael leaves his seat, and swings around the side to open Trevor’s door. Not because he’s feeling gentlemanly, or anything. Just because even now, it’ll probably take a pry bar to take Trevor from his state of sulk.

“I didn’t agree to jack-shit.” Trevor protests, just as Michael thought he would. But then again, he isn’t pulling back to hard when Michael yanks his lanky body from the passenger seat. 

“You agreed when you opened the damn box. C’mon, you’ve got shit to do.”

He still has to pull him a great deal of the way. At least until they’re up to the front door, and Trevor pulls free. 

“I can leave whenever it strikes my fucking fancy.” Trevor says this, but doesn’t act on it. He follows Michael through the red rope, and in through the ocean of lights and pungent smells, just as he’ll probably follow him wherever else the rest of this takes them.

“You sure can, bud.” Michael agrees just to assuage him, as they slip into John’s office. Michael doesn’t care to knock. And the figure in the office chair beyond the door isn’t upset that they didn’t. Upset that he’s being forced to do this at gunpoint, sure. But there’s something in the smile he gives off. Something that says he’s been waiting a long time to meet this Trevor Phillips.

“Well, aren’t _you_ just about everything I thought you’d be.” 

John waits for Trevor’s gratefulness. He doesn’t give it.

“Fuck off.”

John doesn’t even blink. 

“I see why you like him.” He gives Michael a look, and Michael gives him nothing back. He breathes, and blinks, and looks to Trevor as if this was all supposed to be gone when he opened his eyes. It’s all still here. Every last, piece of shit aspect of their outhouse kind of world. it’s a wonder that he’s still smirking. And that Trevor almost is, too. John goes on, as does the outhouse kind of world.

“Let’s see what we can do with him, shall we?”

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Should be one more after this?? I think?? Thank you guys for reading~

The coffee is served at noon, and the hell begins thirty minutes later.

And at twelve thirty in the morning, Michael is instructed to most formally   _ ‘scoot the fuck out of here’ _ . And he does. And while scooting the fuck out of there, he is forced on his way out the door to promise he’ll call at nine tonight. And he does that, too.

So here is nine o’clock. Here is the phone call, and the promise, and the rest of his life. So it begins.

Michael breathes, and waits for the hesitation on the other end of the line. There isn’t any. Things around here, they’re changing by the minute. Things are speeding up like they’ve got somewhere to be. The hesitant breathing, and the awkward pauses are close to dead. The sound on the other end of the line picks up before Michael has a chance to consider hanging up.

“Howdy there, stranger.”

It’s familiar, and it’s gruff, and it’s absurdly fucking annoying. Michael grimaces. And the pangs of frustration are absent in his brain.

“Well, gee  _ fuckin _ ’ willikers...” Michael lets a sickeningly sarcastic look of surprise curl onto his cheeks. Trevor can probably feel that one. “How’d you know it was me?”

Trevor’s chuckle is tired. It’s relaxed. It’s harboring a certain tranquility that Trevor probably means to hide. A chill plays against the back of Michael’s neck. it’s the wind, doing that. It’s -definitely- just the wind doing that.

“You breathe like a space heater with occupational asthma.” Trevor spits, tranquility undisrupted. “If I heard that crap and it  _ wasn’t  _ you, I’d be rightfully concerned.” 

Michael only really _looks_ offended.

“You’re full of shit. That little french perfume and opium cocktail must be getting to your head, or something.”

And then there’s a few seconds where the air is empty, and letting that happen was probably a mistake. Trevor jumps for the chance.

“Right now.” He says. “You’re doing it -right- now.”

“So what, then?” Michael is less than amused by this. “How should I solve this issue of mine? Should I hang up? How about I just stop breathing all together.”

“Either one of those,” Trevor’s voice is unnervingly satisfied. He stops to put his mouth to other use. Smoking, Michael presumes. You can hear his breath over the line, rolling in and out like big easy waves that haven’t crashed this quietly in a long time. “-Would be much obliged, cowboy.”

Michael laughs, then shivers, and then curses at this unforgiving season all in that order. Trevor starts to say something, and Michael makes the risky decision to cut him off. 

“Can’t hardly see you shake it tonight if I’m all dead and lifeless in the snow, can I?”

And as quickly as that new subject began to bloom, it begins to rot. And you can smell that idea dying, and rotting, because nobody talks about it again. Nobody had been talking about it. And from opposite sides of wherever, Michael and Trevor are deciding whether or not they’re ready to talk about this. Whether or not they’re ready to realize that this is a thing that’s happening.

Trevor is the first to bite. Only he doesn’t bite down on the right thing.

“Where might you be making this call from?”

It’s a force of habit that makes Michael shrug like he does. The way his shoulders pull down lazily, and not all the way. Too tired and spent from his hard day of nothing to even shrug like a normal person. Trevor hates what he can’t even see. He almost doesn’t need to see it to know it’s happening.

“Payphone, where else?”

“ _Payphone, where else?_ ” Trevor’s impression of Michael is ear-splittingly annoying, but it’s also not entirely off. “There are multiple payphones in the world, contrary to popular belief.”

Michael snorts, and it’s loud enough to echo. The streets are empty enough for that.

“Outside of a 24/7.”

“Which 24/7?”

“The _ onl _ y 24/7.” Michael uses the tone that he usually does when he feels like the smarter one in the situation. Trevor lets him do it this time. “A block or two away from the junkyard, I dunno’. The store we  _ haven’t _ robbed.”

“Mmm, that’s pretty far out, buddy.” Trevor taps his nails against the phone. They sound longer than they usually do. Michael doesn’t ask about it. “I saw you left the car.”

“It’s a small town. The thing ain’t ours. The less we parade it around, the less we’ll have to worry about someone feeling brave enough to try and get it back.”

“You walked?” Trevor asks, just bordering on condescending. 

“I have legs.” Michael enlightens. “I walk places.” 

“I never would have guessed. You’re on your ass so often, I’d have thought that-”

“I really,  _ really  _ hope this isn’t why you were so intent on me calling you.” Michael, who is already an impatient man, finds himself strangely losing interest in the subject. “It’s not, is it? Cause I’d imagine there are other things on your mind right about now.”

Trevor’s nails are clacking no more.

“Now where in the hell were you raised to believe that a guy can’t call his best friend just because he feels like chewing the fat for a few good minutes?”

“You’re not a guy, Trevor.” Michael feels the chills tickle him again, but refrains from shivering. “I don’t know what you are, but the normal guy rules don’t apply to you.”

There’s sound on Trevor’s end of the line, but it isn’t Trevor. There’s really bad music, and there’s Trevor’s name. People are talking to him, but he’s giving him no more attention than he’d give a bag of potatoes. It only occurs to Michael now, that Trevor is a name that might not apply to his friend right now. So what does?

“What should I call you, babydoll?” Michael only says that because he’s two shots into a good night, and figures that Trevor might get a kick out of it. It’s kind of gross, and he realizes that, but they’re both sort of smiling anyways.

“Not  _ babydoll _ , for shit’s sake. God, Michael.”

Though only minorly embarrassed, Michael is still glad that it’s too dark, and void of life around here for anyone to be able to see what color his cheeks are right about now. Babydoll. Christ. Like grade school again.

“Alright, point taken. So what are they calling you around those parts?”

“Around _ what _ parts, Mikey?”He’s using the kind of voice that’s only really appropriate after a suggestive wink, or an eyebrow waggle. It’s supposed to make him sick. Michael doesn’t really take a whole lot of stock in wondering why it doesn’t. 

“Yeah, okay. Douche.”

Yeah, well, I’m still your favorite dirtball. Mascara don’t fuck with that, y’know.” 

Michael forgets his impatience. it’s cold outside, and something in that cheesy little fortune-cookie anecdote is painting his insides in these bright, warm shades. It’s disgusting. It’s horrible. It’s painfully real.

“One more time.” He simplifies himself. “What am I calling my favorite dirtball tonight?”

“Haven’t decided yet.” Trevor mumbles, reflecting a long internal struggle to figure that out for himself. Trisha has already got an obvious stamp of caution on it, and Michael had heard somewhere at some point that using a name that sounds like your real name is trashy, anyway. Not that this would ever apply to him, but he’d certainly never find -himself- settling for something as trivial as Michelle, or Mikayla.

“How about just dirtball?” Michael suggests, only half seriously.

“How about you suck  _ my  _ balls?”

...Alright, maybe seventy five percent seriously.

“Lovely, just lovely. A real lady, you are.” From that stems, another idea. It’s gross, and not ladylike in any sense of the word, but that’s an accurate description of Trevor all on it’s own. “Lady Anna Tramp?”

“Points for creativity, but no cigar.”

“That was fucking gold, and you know it.” Michael fights for the tacky tag. “I’m out here taking our friendship to the weirdest level it’s ever been by thinking up drag queen names for you, probably getting frostbite on my ass, and you won’t even take my stupid names.”

“I don’t owe you diddly squat, bucko.”

“Hey, that’s not bad. Diddly squat.” Michael, at this point, has lost all feeling in his ears and nose. But his gloves are thick, and his patience is recovering. Things haven’t been like this for a while. The waters are hardly ever still, in this life.  

Michael goes on to push for this name. “It’s kinda’ dirty. Kinda’ cute, even if I’m already getting tired of hearing it.” 

“Like me.”

Michael shifts his weight forward, and then backward again. He sniffles, and licks his top row of teeth. Shiny, and clean, and distracting. It all takes about twenty seconds. And twenty seconds later, he’s still finding it hard not to agree. He nods, and in that nod, lets his walls down just a little bit more.

“Sure. Like you.”

Trevor breathes out deeper than usual, and Michael calls it laughter.

“That sure is _mighty_ kind of you. Considering you were only kind enough to give me a name like  _ diddly squat _ , a few seconds ago.” Someone else calls for him. Trevor ignores them for what won’t be the last time.

“I bet I’m not allowed to ask why, right?”

“Why what?"

Trevor doesn’t hesitate for a single second. 

“Why this. Why  _ any _ of this.”

“Of course not. Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?” Michael, who had barely met Trevor’s mother but once, knew the answer before he’d asked it.

“My mama taught me a lot of things, shithead.” Trevor’s tone darkens enough to reveal shades of cheap red lipstick, and a childhood worth of black and blue. “That wasn’t one of them.”

For a second or two, things get unseasonably cold in this state of mountains and snowbanks. Trevor doesn’t much talk about his mother. So as the rules so secretly say, neither should Michael. 

“Well, then.” Michael clicks his tongue disapprovingly a few times, like his own mother used to do. “Guess you don’t have to abide by that rule, right?”

“Righto.” Trevor snaps his fingers on cue of the word. “Which, as you can guess, means that I do get to look gift horses in the mouth. And if you’ve lost track of what’s going on, which I would definitely count on,  _ that _ means that I get to ask you why you did what you did.”

“You know you’ve got a very logical mind, and you put it to really shitty uses.”

“Now would be a good time to stop senselessly ignoring everything I fucking ask you.”

It does seem that he really isn’t in the position to be dodging questions. He plays with the dirty public phone wire for a few seconds, and imagines that Trevor might be doing the same thing from his just as bacteria-ridden dressing quarters. And he enjoys his life of dishonesty for a few more seconds. 

“Pick a name first.” Michael bats the question away just one more. “The other thing can wait, you’ve got more important things to be thinking about right now.”

“I’ve got a few names for _you_.” Trevor grumbles his sour impatience, and Michael doesn’t wait around to get the actual list of those names. 

“Be serious. You’ve got what, forty-five minutes until this train leaves the station? You can’t tell me you’ve never thought of this before.” 

And Trevor, who has always seemed more comfortable in his own skin (rather than anyone else’s, for that matter) is of course going to say no.

“I bet you’d like to think I have.” In that, he denies it. “I bet you’d like to think I’ve been secretly trotting around in the wrong shade of foundation, and a tight lace body suits since secondary school, wouldn’t you?”

Yes, it’s a cold, cold world. It’s an unfair, unclean, disgusting world. Those words alone could sum up this part of town alone. And miles and miles into this cold, cold world, Michael Townley is smiling despite the chill. Despite every other reason he has not to.

“Pick a name, you nasty fuck.”

Trevor forgets his original quest, and plays the game a little bit longer.

“Pick one for me, sugar.”

Okay. Michael decides that alright, he too will do this for another second or two if Trevor is so stuck on it. So he does as he’s told, and thinks for exactly thirty seconds because he knows that at around thirty-five seconds, Miss fit throwing, dirt throwing, gun slinging Phillips will start to get impatient.

And that thought right there. That’s the thought that strikes the match.

“Tommy Gun.” Michael preaches it like a million dollar scheme. “Only you spell it different on the rosters, or whatever the fuck they use over there. With an I instead of a Y, and two N’s. All sexy-like.”

Trevor isn’t quiet for long, but long enough to let the name flash through his head in a string of glittery letters.

“Tommi Gunn...” It slides off of his tongue smoother than Michael would have expected. And it sounds about four time cheesier than it does when he’d said it himself. Which, he expects, is how it’s supposed to be anyways.

“Tommi Gunn.” Michael repeats. “Like the -actual- gun. Pretty, dangerous. Kills a lot of mobbed up Italian men.”

“Like me.”

Michael sighs.

“Like you.”

There’s a sound on the other end of the line. Like rustling silk. The sound it makes when someone’s dress rubs against your thigh. Or their own thigh, in this case. There’s more noise in a moment. Trevor isn’t talking anymore, but everyone else is. Clacking heels. Someone’s whining in the background. The music is bad, bad, bad.

“Sounds intense.” Michael comments helpfully, as if Trevor hadn’t been aware in the first place. “Maybe I’ll let you fend for yourself from here.”

Trevor answers back, but only after thoroughly cursing someone out for touching his hair in a way that wasn’t preferable. Michael waits through the death threats.

“Hey, what?” He cuts back in. “I should probably hang up soon, some ass in leather pants is trying to tell me how important pre-show focus is. You gonna’ head over here soon?”

“Soon as you let me go, yeah.”

“Fuck off, my conversations are a gift.” He breaks off again, leaving Michael for his weird new reality for another suffocating few seconds. Something pops off. Champagne, maybe. Trevor returns. “Hold on, buddy, you’re not free yet. You gotta’ answer me something.”

“Why? Why  _ all of this _ ?” 

The mimicking isn’t appreciated. But for today, Michael is off the hook.

“Yeah.” Trevor answers. And he’s the quietest thing in the world, for a few moments time. “Yeah, why all of this.”

And after all of this. After these weeks of bullshit, and ignorance, and every shade of denial under the sun. After all of this, Michael laughs. And his laughter is clean, and pure, and dirty only to the ears on the other line that are very, very confused by it. He sniffs. He wipes at the dust of ice that has fallen onto the tip of his nose. 

He tells Trevor that he loves him in the simplest words, and in their own language.

“Take a wild fucking guess, pal.” Michael spits, not angry in the least. “If you haven’t figured it out for yourself now, then you’re dumber than I thought. Break a fucking leg.”

Part of him hopes, as he hangs up the phone, that Trevor will take that literally and somehow put an end to this fever dream. The other part of him, the more compassionate part that he’s been answering to a lot more lately, is silently praying for the opposite. It’s confusion, that keeps him here wondering in the empty air for a moment. And if this is love, which it very well might not be, this must be how it works. Arriving on a cloud of confusion. 

Taking It’s prisoners, and forcing them to walk a thousand steps in the dark of night. A thousand steps to the brightest set of lights on this shadowy earth.

Michael starts walking. And he tells himself to stop putting so much fucking thought into this. That works for maybe ten paces. Maybe. And then he’s inside his own head again, wondering whether or not Trevor is actually wearing those red shoes, and if they actually fit okay, and how likely it is that John will actually have the sheriff waiting for them by the time the night has rolled to it’s last glittery close.

In his mind, the stage is a big different. The color’s are skewed, and the seats are in the wrong places, but everything else is picture perfection. A clip rolls through his head on repeat, for a few slow minutes. Trevor in some burgundy Audrey Hepburn number, mascara in sweaty gobs as the local fuck-force drags him kicking and screaming from the stage.

Michael speeds up his pace a little bit, because  _ just in case. _

It isn’t snowing tonight. It’s still on the ground, because this cold white curse will likely never be broken, but the only ice falling comes from trees, and gutters. The streetlights are dim, and probably won’t ever be bright, but just underneath them is raw perfection. The sidewalks are in these thick, otherworldly blankets. With every step, Michael knows that he’s ruining them. He almost tricks himself into feeling bad.

It doesn’t work because he’s feeling alright tonight. Not amazing. But better than yesterday. And the day before that, and the day before that.

The change in scenery is nothing less than baffling. Less than two steps over the line, and the local color goes from a muddy brown to this bright, sticky shade of pink. You can’t smell cow patties anymore, but that peppermint schnaps scent in the air is equally sickening to the right person. But most everybody here is a peppermint schnaps kind of person, anyhow.

And lord almighty, there are a -lot- of those people here.

Rightfully this time, Michael slips through the red ropes and waits behind the rest of the important guests. The people in the real line, the one that winds practically back into the hick part of town, are peering into him with well-practiced looks of disgust. Jesus Christ, if they only knew.

“Name?” 

It’s his turn, at this point. Michael snaps out of his internal conversations, and reaches for his wallet. 

“Uh, Michael.” And honesty feels surprisingly liberating. There’s a certain warmth in his gut that the old folks say comes with doing the right thing every once in awhile. “Michael Townley.”

It’s Vito again. He’s probably the permanent bouncer, and he probably remembers Michael by his face. That would account for the extra, unneeded flexing, and the mad cow reminiscent look on his hard face. His fists are tight, but his pants are tighter. He leans in real close. Close enough for Michael to catch whiffs of spearmint, and chewing tobacco, and maybe blood if he’s correct.

“Really? You sure about that? You really sure about that?”

“Unfortunately.” The exhaustion in Michael’s words almost strikes the sympathy chord, but not quite hard enough.

“Yeah, I know who you are.” Vito, at about four times Michael’s height, still feels the need to puff his chest out to look threatening. “And I got strict instructions to let -one- a fat sarcastic little idiot.”

Trevor’s words exactly. Michael ponders leaving without him.

“So get in.” He claps Michael on the back, just hard enough to flush out any chance of a witty remark. Picking his battles, he slides past the bouncer. “Just don’t enjoy it.”

“Can’t make any promises.” He snorts, and floats into the smells and lights that he’s becoming a little bit too used to. 

But it’s different tonight, because he’s supposed to be here. His name wasn’t made up, and the staff here are being paid to put up with him. A guest of honor, if you will. So he takes a collapsable table up front, where the atmosphere is far less dark, and where there aren’t at least two different sets of couples in glittery makeup swapping spit and lipstick. The tablecloth is significantly whiter. The lights are brighter.

He orders a drink, and makes it a double. That’s become a dirty habit that he’s not choosing to shake. Drinking problems are still a fad, so he finishes his in under a minute, and feels no remorse in ordering a second one after. It’s nearly ten.

So here comes the third. Because he’s feeling festive, and patriotic to Trevor’s forced hobby, he orders a French 75. Double the gin, and less than a tablespoon of champagne. In his Military grade winter jacket and un-matching pants, Michael takes his girly cocktail and politely sips his way into inebriation.

“Ladies and gents,” Says the all powerful voice from above, who might as well be the god of this place when John isn’t around to say otherwise. “ _ Pleeeaaase _ take your seats and shut up, because this is your last warning.”

Funny. Michael doesn’t remember there being a first warning. Something tells him there wasn’t one at all, and something else tells him not to argue about it. The next drink is a repeat of the last. He lets his ass fuse to the freakishly uncomfortable seat beneath him while everybody else scrambles around for one reason or another.

But for him, it’s slow. Tonight is an end. Tonight is the finishing touch on a big project, or the last day of work before retirement. It’s the big game. Tonight is an ending. It’s that slow part of the book, where you’re warm, and you’ve got your feet up, and you’re just waiting for that final bang before the lights go out, and everything falls back into place.

And the thing with this is maybe it never will. In his state that is far from the gentle grasps of sobriety, Michael is beginning to learn that maturity is watching these men in tight pants and sky-high stilettos, and realizing that maybe it’s fucking okay. That maybe this will kind of be a big part of his life from now on. Maybe not.

Maybe it’s just time to shut up and watch the show. The man on the microphone couldn’t agree more.

“Sweethearts, and shitheads, and paycheck driven employees alike-” He gathers his doting audience by the ear. “Is it ever sweet to have you here on such a night.”

The masses cheer, ninety percent of them already blushing from the cognac in their glasses. 

“On behalf of the girls, and the rest of the staff here grasping out for their meal tickets, I want to thank you for showing our ladies night the love it needs to keep running, and I want to add real quick that you too can donate a little bit of…”

Long before that, Michael tunes out because waiting requires focus. And he’s waiting harder than he probably ever will. So the guy asks for donations, and of course nobody offers anything, and the show kicks off awkwardly until people start to cheer again. 

The first lady, Michael recognizes . And she recognizes him too, as she steps out in all red and immediately fights off a grimace upon locking eyes with a man who held a gun to her head a few days ago. John speeds through some Abba song with an array of different kicks, and a dress that ends up a whole lot shorter than it was when she first stepped out. It isn’t the slutty cheerleader getup, but by god, it’s close. By the time it’s over, there’s no sweat. No panting. John has been doing this for far too long, and it shows.

“How’re we doing tonight, babies?” On that, she introduces herself and slips into a second introduction, while Michael orders another drink, and admits to himself that he hasn’t seen a woman that good looking in this town since his last seedy magazine binge. But that’s bound to happen in a town where the daily death toll is higher than the average IQ.

“...And that’s the last time I’ll ever go to a free pilates class, I’ll tell you that much…” She finishes a joke that Michael wasn’t listening to, and slips away from the stage to allow someone else the temporary adoration for a change. The next one is tall, and thick, and black, and definitely not Trevor.

So Michael waits through it. And the juggling act after that. And then through a half-assed skit that everybody is just crocked enough to howl at. Then there’s another solo, and another, and another, and then Michael gets up to pee, and when he returns it still isn’t time.

But not long after that. Not long after that, Michael perks up on account of the announcer, who’s going on about the  _ last act blues _ , and heckling the audience about buying a tee shirt on the way out after this last act is out.

So the music starts up. And frankly, Michael had been expecting something a little more sentimental than the main theme to Dirty Dancing, which he’s pretty sure Trevor doesn’t even like, but it’s fitting in a certain way.  But it’s John who makes the first appearance. He’s sure it’s John. Just a very different kind of John. He’s wearing a tight black shirt. No tight black dress, or makeup to be seen. He’s left his wig backstage, and he’s taken the appearance of an overly polished gay man.

Michael audibly groans, because he knows -just- what the hell this is. But then his mouth is stuck like that. His eyes aren’t much different. The music plays on.

_ Now I’ve had the time of my life. _

Trevor looks much nicer in pink than Michael would have ever thought. His shoes fit perfectly. There’s silver dust around his eyes.

_ No, I’ve never felt this way before. _

“Ladies and gents, there’s fresh meat in the house tonight. Get her while she’s hot.” The voice over the speakers rings through Michael’s ears, as he watches Trevor’s tall silhouette make shadows all over the stage. “A warm welcome to Miss Tommi Gunn!”

Michael snorts. And Miss fucking  _ Tommi Gunn _ hears him, and she snorts right the hell back. There’s this weird clump of seconds before the actual dancing starts, and it might as well be hours. They’re locked at the eyes, each of them watching each other like they’re the only ones in the room with any sense.

And Trevor, he looks like he’s too good for all of this shit. His eyes are half lidded like he’s so completely over this, but at the same time it keeps him kind of classy. A high status socialite, who knows never to get too excited about anything. But just excited enough.

“Fuck off.” He mouths. She. 

“Fuck you.” Michael mouths back. That’s their greeting, and it’s all the acceptance that they need. Then the act starts for real.

_ I’ve been waiting for so long, now I’ve finally found someone to stand by me. _

Trevor twirls into John, and John spins him out again, a shitty mirror of that stupid dancing movie that has never meant anything to either of them until right now. John’s decision, no doubt. But he picked right, because Michael had no idea that Trevor could move his feet in this particular way. Nor did he know to the extent in which Trevor’s legs kick ass.

Then they do a pick up move, but John only lifts him a little bit, because Trevor isn’t a delicate little lady. His biceps are bulging out beyond the straps of flowy little pink number. He has to work to keep the curly brown mop mop of fake hair on his head, and you can tell because he swears quite audibly as he struggles to keep it on. John is kind of pissed, but everybody else just laughs. Michael laughs.

_ You’re the one thing I can’t get enough of _

The twisting ensues, and Michael notes that Trevor too is laughing. None of this is perfect. It isn’t bad, but it isn’t bad because it’s laughably shitty, and everyone else is too drunk to care about perfect landings, and precision. And he keeps looking back over here, as if to seek Michael’s approval. And every time, Michael just shrugs. Thumbs up. Keep going.

_ So I tell you something, this could be love _

But he knows every goddamn word to this song. And Michael finds that he does too. Trevor is mouthing every word with is glossy lips, and John is shooting him a look fit to kill with, because that’s most likely a big no-no. So Trevor stops mouthing the words, and sings along instead.

So do a lot of people. Mostly the audience members who are too totaled to drive home, and the rest of people that don’t know what the proper etiquette to this show is. But slowly enough, nobody cares anymore. Everybody is drunkenly slurring along to what might as well be the bets song in the world. The dancing isn’t amazing, but it’s fun to watch. Nobody is looking at John. Trevor is the focal point. Michael thinks that maybe it was always meant to be that way.

Maybe Trevor’s having the time of his life. Everybody else is. Michael sort of is. 

It becomes less of an end, and more of a beginning. Trevor up there, with his glossy shaven legs, and his fake head of hair that admittedly looks flattering with his current skin tone. It’s all something that looks too real to be impermanent. Then again, maybe it never was impermanent. This was never anything new. Just open, now.

Trevor’s red shoes for dancing the blues plant firmly on the ground in what looks like a final stop. But the song isn’t over, and John is gesturing like a mad man for him to keep going. But Trevor isn’t listening, and it’s not like he wouldn’t have listened in the first place. But his focus seems...elsewhere.

And in a second or two, he’s elsewhere. Trevor is dashing off through an unseen door, waving his goodbyes to an audience that kind of sort of loves him, and holding the flare of his dress as he scurries out. The music cuts out, but the singing doesn’t. It’s extremely possible that Michael is the only one who notices that Trevor even left.

He looks back to investigate. And there are  _ definitely  _ two or three men back there in police uniforms that are too dirty to be costumes. The unshaven faces, and the pudgy stomachs they come accessorized with tells Michael that these aren’t stripper cops.

These are real cops. And they’re rushing the stage, following through the exit that Trevor took as John stands by and does nothing. He made good on his promise. The cops were here before the final bow. 

Well, if Michael hadn’t fucking predicted it.

Michael follows suit. He could be seeing red. It could also be the lighting. It could also be both. But once he’s outside, the music is gone, and so are the lights and the smells, and all there is is snow and chaos. He’s still seeing red. Trevor, on the other hand, perhaps isn’t.

He’s fighting back, sure. He always fights back. One shoe remains, and he kicks it off into the air for a chance at freedom as they restrain him by his shoulders and arms. The right shoe, a red beam of light in the dark night, smacks a nearby police officer right on the nose. Trevor cackles.

That wasn’t what they were meant to do. Shows, and dresses, and makeup, and dancing. This. This is their forte, and their ultimate calling. To fuck everything up. To make people bleed, and piss off entire town’s, and run away with their heart’s and their money before they even have a chance to notice. This is what it’s about.

There’s blood in the snow, and it doesn’t belong toTrevor. Most of the officers in charge of subduing him are covered in spit. He still looks damn fabulous while doing it all. These are all signs that Trevor is winning. And even when he starts to lose, even when they start to get a good hold on him, and they’re forcing him into the back of that shitty old squad car, he’s still got that shine on him.

There’s still stardust in his eyes, and fire in his very being as he looks at Michael one last time. Because he knows that Michael is coming for him. He knows that this isn’t the end, but rather another screwy beginning. Michael knows it, too. And Trevor knows something else.

He knows why Michael did this. And with his last free hand, he blows a kiss, and lets his middle finger fly high as Michael sees the last of that smirk for the night.   
The door shuts. Some pink polyester blend is caught in the door as the car speeds off, and Michael watches it flap around under the forces of harsh winter wind. Michael curses to himself. And his brain switches into planning mode, his fingers still snapping along to a tune that will wash out of his mind when the world is over.


	7. Chapter 7

Michael eases himself. In a swift  motion, all stiffness in his neck releases with a single pop as he jerks his head to the left. He sniffles once, and goes quiet. Then he admits it to himself that tonight was arguably the best night of his life.

He and his stolen car are lonely and used up ghosts, aging and haunting the small world that exists only under the tiny sliver of egg-yolk colored sunshine that slips through the dash window. Michael sits here, waiting, and aging, and waiting again. In the light, his face is contorting. With every second after tonight’s events, he’s dealing with a new feeling. New realizations that twist his fresh face into hard rock, and then back into softness at the blink of an eye. For a moment, he’s angry. The next second, he’s snickering to himself like a third grade girl.

Because of tonight, Michael is changing. Things are getting different, and you can feel it. You could probably taste it in the air, if you stuck your tongue out far enough. Because under the lonely light in this strange parking lot, Michael is growing up.

The parking lot in question belongs to the police station. And because the department is mostly composed of volunteers, and glorified patriots with an unhealthy fondness for the second amendment, they don’t catch that one of the single cars in the parking lot has not only been reported stolen, but is currently harboring a very important criminal. That’s the problem with small towns. They don’t play the game well enough for it to be fun. Michael doesn’t necessarily mind because he isn’t here to rescue a good time.

But a risk taker is a risk taker. So Michael sits here with his feet placed ever so rudely on the dash, and considers his options. What are the chances that they’ll recognize him if he just waltzes in there? Slim, probably. Seneca Hill can barely support it’s residents, let alone hire a resident sketch artist. And once he goes in there, no doubt armed and screaming, what are the chances that he’ll be able to reach Trevor unharmed.

Trevor. Jesus christ, Trevor. Still dressed like sparkles and sunshine, makeup smeared across his livid features like an overpriced warpaint. Shoeless, at this point. Basically hell in an expensive dress and french perfume. But he’s a kind of hell that Michael has stock in. Mushy-gushy, feelsy stock that he’s still in part ashamed of, but stock still.

So the aforementioned chance is looked at again, but with less scrutiny this time. Basically, this rescue mission is going to result in someone getting shot, and the aim of the game is to make sure that it’s not them. 

Surely there are other options. Michael leaves the car, and he leaves it unlocked.  _ Less dangerous options.  _ He passes the beaten car meters, and cigarette butts, and faded billboards for what he hopes to god, hopes to every single god out there, will be the last time.  _ Smarter options. _

Smug as shit, as always and forever, Michael enters the door with a false smile that he might as well trademark. His grin fades fairly quickly. As everything else in this place, it’s as empty in here as a southern liquor store on a sunday morning. And ironically enough, the only inhabitant is a little old lady. 

She doesn’t even catch him at first. She’s behind the front desk, adorned in no uniform, but a but a scraggly blue sweater with little crochet kittens on the pocket. The material she’s fussing with in her hands looks the same as the material she’s wearing. Her hair is a dyed shade of coppery orange, and her face is determined. Call him crazy, but Michael keeps the gun in his pocket.

“Ma’am?” Michael puts on his sunday best in the form of his voice. She doesn’t answer right at first.

“...Ma’am?” He speaks a little louder this time, and her face snaps up. His nerves melt when her face change. She looks at him with a face that makes him want to call his mother, and just like that he’s sick to his stomach. This had not been anticipated.

“Well gosh, if it isn’t the third or fourth time I’ve done that!” She exclaims, balling up a loose and veiny fist. “Would you excuse an old woman’s mistakes, sweetheart? My granddaughter has her first baby coming very soon now, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them buy their clothes from some hoo-ha big business store. That flimsy husband of hers. Everything has to be brand clean with him. Bah.”

Michael is uncomfortable, and as he’s always been taught to do, he doesn’t let it show. He remembers to smile at her, and the one she gives back is perhaps the realest he’s ever seen. The teeth behind it are false, and very obviously so, but there’s warmth in the way she looks at him. A kind of warmth he can’t rightly shoot at.

“Well, well, nevermind all that.” She pushes aside some blank papers, and makes herself look real business like. “Where was I?”

He tastes a small chuckle as it leaves his lips, and finds that this new found patience is making his insides sickeningly warm and sunny. 

“Nowhere yet, ma’am.” He annunciates every word with the politeness and vigor of a man who has something to go home to. “I’m, uh. I’m just here to see about visiting someone.”

_ Visiting someone _ .  _ Really?  _ His stomach curls up in seventeen types of discomfort. Sure, he’d been planning a visit. The lethal weapon in his pocket had been planning on having a very nice meeting with whoever thought it wise to stand in his way. But things didn’t seem to be going that way. The outline of the gun in his pocket has gone cold, and his trigger finger has lost the itch. Mother goose over here hasn’t a damn clue that Michael might have been planning to blow her brains and her false teeth to kingdom come.

“Visiting someone?” She sports a hearing aid, but Michael is willing to bet that this isn’t the reason she’s asking for a repeat.

Michael nods. Michael gives up a little bit.

“Visiting someone.”

“Hmm.” She ponders an intangible subject, her honeyed voice now revealing a history of heavy smoking. Michael watches the sympathy flicker in those glassy cornflower blues, and the wrinkles on her face fold into an expression that says  _ I’m oh so sorry. _

“Now I’m just a volunteer here, honey.” She breaks the news. “I volunteer here on Mondays, y’know. So I can’t rightly let you slip back and see anyone right now, especially not when the deputies are out on one of their little goose chases. And every single one of them, too. Now isn’t that just the darndest…”

So call him insensitive, but the one sided conversation ends up slipping out of his ears. Michael tunes out. She’s still yapping, and he keeps his face real interested, nodding and chuckling every now and again when it seems appropriate. That’s part of what you learn on the high school football team. Not so much how to throw a football if you’re left handed or shit like that. More along the lines of how to keep up your end of the conversation without, well...Conversing. Worked on his girlfriends, anyway.

The fact of the matter is, his options are slimming down. It comes down to this. Leave, or grab the fucking keys and bust Trevor out and hightail it the fuck out of here because seriously, what can she  _ possibly _ do about it? He probably wouldn’t even have to pull his gun. Just in and out, smooth as tennessee whiskey. So long as Trevor doesn’t get too excited. People tend to bleed when Trevor gets too excited.

Michael makes the decision, accepts the fact that he’s already going to hell and pushing an old lady aside to grab some keys really shouldn’t make a difference, and he tunes back in. Just as he’s ready to get going.

And then.

“And then poof! She was gone like the darndest magic trick you ever seen! One red shoe left behind like some sort of fairy tail. And mind you, she  _ only  _ had  _ one  _ on when she came in here, so wherever she is now, I bet you her feet are hurting something bad.”

And  _ then _ . Damn right, _ and then _ !

“Heh. H-hold on one second here, I…” Michael wonders whether or not to play it like he’s been listening the whole time, and ends up doing just that. “Who, uh...Who did you say this lady was with the shoes?”

“With the  _ lack  _ of shoes. No shoes. Left the last one here.” She shakes her head like it’s just about the craziest thing she’s ever seen. Obviously doesn’t own a television. Obviously never been out of this county. “I couldn’t tell you her name. I’d be too afraid to ask. But she was awfully homely looking. Not that that’s rare around here.”

The mini heart attack that Michael suffers is perhaps the seventh he’s experienced in the past twenty-four hours. This could be awful. This could be horribly, horribly bad, only Michael doesn’t know because he was too busy deciding whether or not his morals would allow him to knock out an elderly woman.

Yet, for reasons undocumented, she goes on. She adds something, simple on her tongue but more immensely important than she could ever know. Than Michael could ever have known until he hears it.

“She had full eyes, though. Happy ones.” She chortles like an old radiator, the memory already stale in her old mind. “You can always tell. You can  _ aaalways _ tell.”

There’s a cold numbness, starting in like frostbite. It kisses his fingers, and engulfs his hands and feet with the urgency of a long lost lover. He knows feelings like this. Feelings  _ like _ this. Just not exactly. He never wants to feel it again. And then he wants to feel it every day for the rest of his life.

Still, he humors himself. He looks at her like he wants to know more. A child with a big, bad story book. The happy ending threatens to unfold. He hardly believes it.

“Why would you say that is?”

She offers him an over exaggerated shrug, and the rise of an old, wrinkly brow.

“Crows are awful creatures. Awful, ugly, and excuse my french, bat-shit crazy creatures. I’ve seen it. They eat their own kind. They scream just for the hell of it, and they stink up the place, and they’re all better off rotting into the ground, fertilizing the rest of nature's creations. Natures useful,  _ sane  _ creations.”

Michael almost thinks she isn’t going to tack anything onto that. She almost doesn’t. And then her personal vendetta with crows softens, and so does her leathery face.

“But they have nests to fly home to. Whatever she is, she has some kind of nest to fly home to.”

He doesn’t understand. Not at first. But she’s looking at him, telling him with a nasily little scoff that he doesn’t need to, because obviously this doesn’t concern him or the person he’s come to visit in the least bit. He’s a handsome young man, she’s thinking. Good, strong shoulders. A soft, doughy face, but good shoulders. Anybody would be lucky to have their arms tied around those shoulders. Those shoulders have no reason to be inquiring about crows in pink dresses, and their no doubt disgusting excuses for nests.

“Right.” He turns on his heel, and continues his search for the crow in the pink dress. She watches him go, and thinks of holding him up. But the door opens for only a moment to let in the smell of chill and ice, and then he’s gone. Presumably forever. She thinks that probably, he wouldn’t have stayed and answered any of her questions anyways. No. She knows.

Good shoulders are something. Full, curious, bat-shit crazy eyes are something else.

Michael doesn’t even know that he has them. But he does. They don’t fit in here, in this part of town. His crazy, stupid eyes. Like a disease. The parking lot is desolate as he walks back to the car. But he catches his face in the reflection of every lonely vehicle. Every outcasted squad car keeps him company with his own reflection. There’s a joker smile, only tackling half of his face. His eyes are still blazing with disease. The disease is excitement, and curiosity, and maybe even a little pit poisoned with anger. There is no cure. 

He doesn’t know it when he buckles in, but it will be for the last time. Like clockwork he goes through the motions, putting it in drive, tucking the chokey part of the seat belt behind his back like his mother always told him not to. He likes it that way. Always has.

It’s good outside. So he doesn’t start the car yet. Partly because Trevor is well, nowhere to be found at the moment (in custody? dead? running barefoot through Main Street with a forty ounce and a tube of lipstick?). But it’s also just pretty out. And sure, that’s a dumb reason to stay put when there’s work to be done, and a town to skip. But he’ll never get used to it. To any of this beyond the dash window. And it will always, always, always keep him questioning.

The trees sag underneath spitty snow, beyond a trashy splot on the map named Seneca Hill. They form a daisy chain, all around the horizon, and from here it looks like there’s no way out of them but above. It’s the most beautiful above the trees. Splotches of vermillion, and tangerine, and a thousand other stupid ways to say orange and red. It’s disgustingly beautiful. Several shades of fruity vomit, dancing out mysteries. The best vomit Michael has ever seen. How fitting it is, that the sweetest part of the earth is the part that nobody is allowed to wander into. 

“What the  _ fuck _ am I on.” He hisses into his peripheral vision. The arms around his neck have been there for twenty seconds now. It’s isn’t the fact that they’re there at all, that scares him. It’s the fact that it took him this long to notice.

“Whatever it is, you didn’t share.” Trevor says. Doesn’t take a fucking detective to decipher who that is. “I thought we agreed that the first time you dropped acid we’d be together?”

A younger version of himself internally hisses,  _ don’t fucking touch me.  _ Another Michael is asking Trevor just where the fuck he’s been, and why his overall most favorable plan of action was sneaking into the backseat and hiding there like some sort of flowery scented assassin.  _ Has he always been back there? Did he just get in? Why isn’t this weird? _

Current Michael speaks. 

“We did. I’m not on acid, fucknut.” Trevor’s arms are bare. They’re unmoving, and the slight irritation of arm hair is stagnant on Michael’s neck. “Heroin. Learn your terms. That old lady in there is quite the hook up.”

A burst of laughter erupts from too close behind him, filtering into his ear. When the warm current of chuckles tapers in, Trevor’s head falls into the curve of Michael’s shoulder. His bare arms slide down a sweet little bit further. Trevor inhales, and Michael’s scent renders him blissfully catatonic. It’s smoke, and wetness, and powdered donuts, and sugary cologne, and it’s the best thing he’s ever smelled. Michael shutters.  _ This is not a dream. This is not a drill. _

“ _ Theeeere’s _ my big strong man and his tiny, infrequent sense of humor.”

Trevor breathes again. His posture is tired, and his body begins to melt under pressures too grand to count. Like falling into bed after a long day. Like coming home after days, and years, and eternities. His voice is almost unheard.

“There you are.” He tells Michael. Because after all of this, Michael is somehow the one being found. Hide and seek is over, and he has been deemed the loser. It’s okay. He’s happy to be so.

After days of racing, and the fastest of paces, it’s good to sit like this for a bit. There are no more riddles to solve. Nobody has said anything much, but they both know that the game is over. They watch gobs of melting gold drip through the windshield, and take them completely as the day rolls into motion. They don’t look at each other. They don’t need to.

In time, maybe seconds or maybe hours, Michael finds that the controlling of his actions is not his anymore. He doesn’t know how long his hand has been resting over Trevor’s, but the time is now over. It’s sliding up the length of his arm, tracing the jutting angles, and the scatters of pink scars that nothing will ever heal. 

His hand isn’t on Trevor’s face for long. But just long enough to feel the prickly patch under the smooth of his cheekbone that those makeup artists forgot to shave. Just long enough to begin to miss it when Trevor moves drastically.

At first, Michael thinks he’s done something wrong. He’s ready for that to be the end, and for a long, and uncomfortable car ride to commence until the whole couple of weeks inevitably repeats itself in the next town. Cycles like this never tend to end.

But then again, Trevor has never soberly clambered into his lap. He crawls over the center console, and absorbs the rest of the sunlight as he settles onto Michael’s legs. At first, like a child might. He’s all limbs and confusion, settling his bony figure onto the edge of Michael’s left thigh. A bit too innocent for the likes of him.  He’s still wearing that pink dress, and doing it worse than Jennifer Grey ever did. The zipper is halfway down, and one of the sleeves is dipping down past his comically bulky bicep. The wig is kaputz, and his dark hair is flirting with several different directions. He’s a hot mess. It looks nice on him.

The position changes quickly. In a second, and after an awkward debacle of legs and arms and movements, things are much more suitable. Trevor’s legs are on either side of Michael, all of their heat concentrated in one, sweet and delicate shared spot. Michael doesn’t want to call it straddling...But that’s kind of the right word for it.

Trevor opens his stupid mouth.

"Always check the backseat, idiot. Criminals are everywhere. There to take you, and steal you, and  _ravish_ you when you least expect it."

And dear  _ sweet _ Jesus, Michael has forgotten what it’s like to be new at something.

It’s like taking a shot. You don’t know what kind of alcohol it is, but it travels from your chest to your stomach, and then it’s burning you. Burning a hole in your stomach for the first time in years, because you forgot what it was like to taste fire. His cock twitches. His head aches. Trevor’s arms are around his neck again, and everything is hazy and pink and sweaty. Trevor’s eyes are deep, and dark, and entirely burnt. He smells like cinnamon, if there’s even any possible reason for that. Michael inhales, and licks his cracked, and hungry lips. This is it. This is where it happens.

And then, it doesn’t. It’s over, because Trevor moves his hands to the shades of red on Michael’s cheeks, and he opens his mouth. Not quite in the way that Michael expects. His voice escapes, and that voice is gruff, and serious. His tease of a tongue stays right where it is.

“I need you to swear to me that this is done.”

The uncomfortable shivers between the meat of his thighs doesn’t subside, but his train of thought does for a moment. Michael is hot, and bothered, and confused, and a little agitated.

“It’s done. Okay. Yessir.” Michael grumbles, feeling for the jammed zipper on Trevor’s back. “ _ Whatever  _ you want.”

“No.” Trevor’s hand smacks Michael’s away, and whizzes around to pin him against the seat, finger to chest. Michael’s surprised at how strong that one finger actually  _ is _ . The face before him is hard, and the ideas it’s harboring don’t seem to be going anywhere.

“I want you to fucking  _ swear _ to me, Michael.”

Michael snorts. “Swear what?”

“That...That this shit is done, it’s over.”

“That  _ what’s  _ done?” Micheal starts to wonder if he could worry about getting dry, and then Trevor scoots forward, grinding his bony ass into a very delicate, but very magical spot. Michael bites his lip. The voice that comes out is understandably weak.

“That you, uh...Coming onto me at perceivably random times is over? That me reciprocating is over?” Michael grunts as Trevor scoffs, and scoots forward again. “Alright, you really have to stop doing that.”

Trevor brushes off that comment as Michael predicted that he would, and the stoic expression on his face doesn’t drip, or even falter.

“I want you...To swear that the  _ stupid _ fighting is over.” He thinks for a moment, and changes his wish. “Not, I mean...Not all of it. I like fighting with you. You’re a piece of shit, and you’re fun to fight with because you get offended so goddamn easily all the time, and pushing your buttons is like, ninety eight percent of what I get off on.”

That doesn’t help. Michael’s brow furrows into his cloudy grey eyes.

“Your point being.”

“I mean,” The man in the tarnished makeup scoffs, and rightfully so like a teenaged girl. “It gets so  _ boring _ , Michael. The _ stupid _ fighting. The kind of fighting where you ask me where I’m going, and-and one of us gets worked up because I won’t answer or something. Or the kind where...Where don’t talk for like three hours because one of us is acting like a bitchy ex girlfriend, and-”

“One of us.” Michael gets another teasing scoot for that, and subsequently lets a little bit of a whimper slip.

“Fuck off. Point is, it’s over. No more couples counseling. I don’t care that you’re a douche, and I don’t care that you pry too much, and I don’t care that you act like my girlfriend when you’re nothing but a-”

“Fair enough.” Michael shrugs, calling that at least even. He plays with the loose strap around Trevor’s bicep to pass the time. And Trevor kind of quirks a smile at his hand as he does that.

“I swear. And I don’t care that you’re a fucking disease, and a psychopath, and the worst person that I’ll probably ever meet in my life,” It’s supposed to be over there. It’s fair for it to be over there. But it’s been kind of a wild ride. Wild rides aren’t ever usually over until you hit the brakes, and put it into park.

Michael doesn’t hit the breaks. Not ever will he hit the breaks. They’re young, and they’re awful, and this speeding car of a life is unfortunately doomed to keep going for a very long time.  But he does sort of put this whole thing into park, as his hand creeps up to tuck a bothersome strand of hair back behind Trevor’s ear.

“I don’t care that you like to wear ugly dresses and paint your nails.”

Later, Trevor might be mad that his sacred dresses were called anything less than immaculate. But it’s a time in which a confession like that is rare. So he snarls a little, but when Michael looks again, it’s clear that that snarl is actually a smirk. And that that smirk is actually a smile. Or something like one. 

“Fine.” He decides. His voice is softer than is will ever be again. His dirty, calloused thumbs trace the soft thick of Michael’s bottom lip. Just barely, his thumbnail wiggles into the slit of Michael’s mouth, finding the wet heat to be something comparable to heaven. The closest he’ll ever be.

“I don’t care that you’re a fat shit.” He coos, the rasp in his voice painting pictures in red within the walls of Michael’s mind. “I don’t care that you’re useless. Don’t care that you look like a fucking puppet when you run in the snow. I don’t care that you broke your elbow that one time. I don’t care that-”

They don’t care anymore. They don’t care that they’re kissing now. Because it wasn’t at all unpredicted, as abrupt as Michael’s decision was to lean up and let his mouth finally,  _ finally _ see if that piece of shit is as great of a kisser as he’s always claimed to be. Michael deems that he’s alright. Nothing special, but not bad, either.

But he keeps kissing him just because...Just for the hell of it. There’s something about this that tastes better than air. Trevor tastes like smoke, and breath, and vodka, and Michael stops counting the flavors after Trevor’s hands sneak up the back of his shirt.

The thing that almost ruins this, is how natural this is. Michael already knows every curve of Trevor’s mouth, for some reason. Every knot of flesh, every prickle of hair against his chin. The loss of air. The complete, and utter disregard for air because he really hates to enjoy this so much, but frankly, this is all that he  _ needs _ .

Trevor pulls back first. They stare back at each other, confused, new, shaking and foreign to each other as the strand of spit still connecting their mouths snaps, falling back to Michael’s chin. Trevor snickers, and wipes it away with his thumb. That ugly laugh. Michael falls back to earth.

This is Trevor. This is Michael. Contrary to whatever you believe, this is not the first time you’ve met.

“I don’t care about you.” Michael looks at the enigma on his lap, a facade of disgust not managing to hide the alien adoration. “Like, at all.”

Trevor breathes. His eyes are fire, and his fists are suddenly hard around the naked curve of Michael’s shoulder blades.

“Piece a’ shit.” He whispers. Collision again. Everything fades to a velvet black. Something else begins. As it always, and always, and always will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand it's over! Whew. That was quite the ride. I hope that was an okay ending? Seriously, if you made it through this, you're amazing. Thank you so much, and it would really help if you'd tell me what you think. 
> 
> Thank you, lovelies!  
> xoxoxo

**Author's Note:**

> Heeey, I hope you liked it! It was pretty first chaptery, but I think it's gonna' turn out pretty good. This should be quite the roller coaster. Thanks for reading!


End file.
